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Portal 2

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"Okay, look. We've both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster. "

— GLaDOS

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Portal 2 is a sequel to the game Portal. It picks up the story of Chell an unspecified number of years after the events of the first game. The Aperture Science Enrichment Center has fallen into ruin, and Chell is awakened from cryogenic sleep by Wheatley, a talkative Personality Core who needs her help to escape the lab. While roaming the remains of the facility, the two accidentally repower GLaDOS — who is, needless to say, not too happy to see Chell again. GLaDOS puts Chell right back into a series of test chambers while she works on getting the Enrichment Center to rebuild itself, while Wheatley continues to attempt to engineer an escape.

During the course of the game, much is revealed about Aperture Science's backstory — as well as the backstory of its founder, Cave Johnson, and several other characters. The game introduces new environments, including the ruins of the Enrichment Center from the first game, the abandoned facilities of the original Aperture Laboratories, and a haphazard and idiotic renovation of the modern test chambers. While the game is still fairly linear, it offers a lot more room for exploration and many puzzles involve getting from one test chamber to the next, not merely solving the challenges within.

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The two-player cooperative mode deserves its own mention, as it isn't simply a retread of the main game; instead, it takes place in a different set of test chambers with a separate plot and fresh revelations about the world of Aperture Science. The playable characters are not humans, but instead a pair of robots named ATLAS and P-Body that were created by GLaDOS as "the perfect test subjects". (ATLAS' design is based on a Personality Core, while P-Body's is based on a turret.) The co-op mode ups the ante significantly in terms of the complexity of the puzzles, thanks chiefly to having two extra portals to work with.

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Unlike the first game, Portal 2 is a full-priced game, but the single-player campaign runs 2-3 times as long as in Portal, and the co-op is similarly paced.

A co-op and challenge DLC pack entitled "Peer Review" was released on October 4th, 2011. The DLC allows players to perform a Speed Run in each map and compare their results against their friends' records. In co-op, a new group of test chambers are present to further challenge players and a new plot is introduced for it.

A second DLC pack entitled "The Perpetual Testing Initiative" (PeTI) was released on May 8th, 2012. It allows players to design and share their own test chambers through a new creative mode built into the game. These player made chambers can then be used to play through a pseudo-single player campaign about Cave Johnson sending test subjects to explore (and steal from) Alternate Universe versions of Aperture Science. Instead of playing as Chell, the player character is one of the generic stick figures featured in the Cave Johnson trailers, officially named "Bendy". Custom Chambers have their own page over at Portal Custom Maps.

Fact Sphere:Edmund Hillary, the first person to climb Mount Everest, did so accidentally while chasing a bird.

Achievements in Ignorance: Wheatley, despite being dumb as a brick, somehow managed to make the test chambers even less safe, and even more dangerous than GLaDOS ever did.

Achievement Mockery: There's an achievement for falling for GLaDOS's trap... and another for falling for Wheatley's.

Activation Sequence: GLaDOS gets an epic one filled to the brim with Technology Porn early in the game. It's so awesome it was used as a prime marketing feature in the trailers.

Adaptational Intelligence: An alternate Cave Johnson introduced in the Perpetual Testing Initiative is still a Cloud Cuckoo Lander like the true Cave Prime, but this one actually comes to terms with the fact that his current practices are driving Aperture Laboratories to near-bankruptcy. He then comes up with a plan to piggyback on several other alternate Apertures to avoid having to pay for his own test chambers. It's also implied that he never got on board with purchasing moon rocks which would kill him, and after being audibly disturbed by how an alternate Cave turned out, he made sure to pull the plug on the development of GLaDOS as soon as possible.

Additionally, another alternate Cave managed to buy out Black Mesa. After reviewing the inherited experiments, he immediately shut them down due to all of them potentially being able to start a Resonance Cascade.

A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Played with — the programming of GLaDOS' main body will apparently turn every A.I. attached to it insane, regardless of its personality. Several safeguards were instated to prevent GLaDOS from getting out of hand, from mundane to downright ridiculous. ...Yeah, none of them went too well.

Inverted by the turrets. Designed as killing machines, they practice and ultimately end up performing operas rather than putting holes in you.

Space Prison Warden!Cave Johnson: "Attention test prisoners attempting to escape through the air ducts, I don't know what nonsense you learned on TV, but in real life, air ducts just go to the air conditioning unit. It's also pretty dusty, so if you've got asthma, chances are you're gonna die up there. And we'll be smelling it for weeks, because, again, air ducts aren't a secret escape hatch, they're how we ventilate the facility."

Alas, Poor Villain: The post-credits scene where Wheatley, floating in space at the end, regrets his betrayal of Chell. It's particularly touching that even though he's lost in space with the Space Core ranting in his ear forever, this guilt is what is really bothering him.

All Girls Like Ponies: Implied by Wheatley if you pass "The Part Where He Kills You" and return after the trap is sprung to encourage Chell to jump into the pit, along with a series of other stereotypically "girly" incentives.

All That Glitters: Done sarcastically by GLaDOS at one point near the end of the Co-Op campaign. Where she claims that even though she'll get all the credit for rescuing the humans the bots still have the trust they formed throughout the test.

The Lab Rat tie-in comic bridges the gap between the two games, as well as resolving the fate of the mysterious "Rattmann" who scribbled on the walls. It also provides a lot of backstory, if you read between the lines, offering a possibility for where GLaDOS got the neurotoxin to begin with and explaining why Rattmann drew cats on the walls in the sequel. GLaDOS claimed to be experimenting with Schrodinger's Cat.

The official tie-in Potato Science Kit includes extra information about the fateful Bring Your Daughter To Work Day (the reason everybody made a potato battery for the science fair was that Aperture were trying to offload an oversupply of potatoes one of their misjudgements had stuck them with) and the young Chell in particular (her father was an Aperture employeenote (and was not Cave Johnson — although if GLaDOS is right about her being adopted, that still leaves some options open) who brought her to Bring Your Daughter To Work Day; also, she was apparently quite the Deadpan Snarker before she became a Heroic Mime).

Alternate Universe: The Excuse Plot for the PeTI DLC is that Aperture is nearly bankrupt, so to save on test chamber construction costs, they sneak the designs into an Aperture in an Alternate Universe, let them build it, then steal it back. In nearly every one of these alternate universes, Cave Johnson is still CEO/Prison Warden/Matriarch/Whatever of Aperture (except for one where it's Doug Rattman).

One of the audio that you hear at the beginning of the tests implies that the "Earth Prime" that sends the test subjects to alternate universes is itself an alternate universe of the main story.

You can also notice this if you've listened to the developer commentary and noted that originally Cave's assistant is a scientist named Greg, who is replaced by Caroline to save actor cost, while in Earth-Prime Greg is Cave's assistant, and Prime Cave never mentioned Caroline. Plus, if you play enough maps the last couple voice overs have Cave Prime and Dark Cave each finding a universe made of money, basically giving Aperture all the funding it will ever need, thus avoiding the financial woes Aperture was clearly in around Cave's death.

Aluminum Christmas Trees: Apparently, the moon rock poisoning Cave Johnson was afflicted with is a real hazard. Lunar dust is just as destructive to human lungs as asbestos, which means like Cave, you will suffer a slow, horrible death if you breathe too much of the stuff in. The effects are similar to silicosis, symptoms of which are displayed by Cave. Many scientists have even noted that lunar dust poisoning will be a significant issue if/when humanity eventually colonizes the Moon.

The trailers narrated by Cave Johnson feature technology that would have been created long after Johnson had died in-universe.

In the test chambers from The '50s, Johnson often refers to "astronauts" who have "flown into space". The first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, made his historic flight in 1961.

Even in the main test chambers some of the computers look like they are from the 90s and 80s while most the hardware is downright futuristic.

And Now for Someone Completely Different: Single player mode has you playing as Chell while Co-Op has you play as one of the robots, Atlas and P-Body. Playing on a community map from the Steam Workshop DLC has you playing as neither Chell or the robots, but as one of the stick figures from the many videos seen in the game and by Valve. He has been officially dubbed as Bendy by Valve.

GLaDOS tells you that she has a black box feature that forced her to relive the last 2 minutes of her life, right up until the point where you killed her. Over. And over. And over. If the 300 years in the future thing is accurate, this means she relived that roughly 78.8 million times; no wonder she's pissed off. That being said, we only have GLaDOS's word on this, so like just about everything else she says, she might simply be lying.

GLaDOS also implies this is what she's planning to do with Chell (at first), running tests over and over until she dies, then reanimating her to do it again, forever.

GLaDOS becomes a potato, and is eaten by a bird.

Invoked late in the game, when GLaDOS lays out an elaborate revenge plan against Wheatley, which includes "10 years inside the room where all the robots scream at you".

Wheatley's fate, in which he is stuck in space with only the Space Core for company qualifies, but only provided that he doesn't die a merciful death before he goes mad. Since he no longer has any power source, it's possible, but because of the low power draw of Aperture Science devices, far from certain.

A verse from GLaDOS's song "Want You Gone" hints at this: "One day they woke me up/So I could live forever/It's such a shame the same will never happen to you". Given that she's unlikely to wish something wonderful for Chell, it's entirely possible that she secretly regards her immortality as this trope.

Anti-Frustration Features: The developer commentary mentions several occasions where they cheated in the player's favor to make some parts of the game less frustrating.

The game is extremely forgiving of entering portals while carrying objects.

Thermal Discouragement Beams bend to snap to puzzle elements.

Thermal Discouragement Beams don't damage you while you're in midair, giving you room for error when jumping over them.

Propulsion Gel has a tethering effect that helps keep you running straight so that a minor trajectory error won't kill you.

Repulsion Gel will automatically make you jump if you hit it at speed.

You and other objects will be funneled towards portals on the floor when falling towards them.

Many portal surfaces auto-center your shot.

In two time-critical areas note (both in The Part Where He Kills You) the game will switch portals around if you accidentally shoot a portal of the wrong color.

If you can't figure out how to sabotage the Turret Control Line, Wheatley will eventually tell you to go get a rejected turret.

GLaDOS:(As P-Body and Atlas kill some turrets)What are you doing?! You Monster!! They're one of us!(suddenly chipper)I'm kidding. Destroying them is part of the test. They're no more important to you than you are to me.

Apple of Discord: GLaDOS does her best to find one during the co-op campaign, such as pretending to be in conversation with Blue/Orange about how awful Orange/Blue is or this, when one of the robots dies:

GLaDOS:You were right, Blue. Orange was dumb enough to fall for your trap.

She also starts off by awarding "scientific collaboration points" to players, which the game actually tracks and saves to your steam profile similar to how other games track things like kill to death ratios. She will often award players for betraying their partners, or subtract points from whomever reaches the exit second. The points aren't really worth anything, and most players will end with several million points below zero.

Art Evolution: The Rat Man sure got a lot better at drawing on walls between games.

The developer's commentary notes that one reason they initially put players into the test chambers from the first game was to give them a chance to appreciate the graphical improvements against a familiar setting.

The elevators and Material Emancipation Grills look very different than they did in the first game. The Emancipation Grills were changed due to them looking "threatening" to playtesters who, ironically, kept walking through them without realizing their purpose until a puzzle appeared that utilizes them. The new design is meant to represent something along the lines of flowing water. Meanwhile, the elevators were redesigned to have large screens surrounding them, which play videos as a way of rewarding the player for completing the test.

Artifact Title: Almost happened. It was originally set to be a prequel to the original, with brand new characters and no portals which were to be replaced with a brand new undisclosed game mechanics. While Valve loves it, the testers hated it.

Also a subversion as, although he's stupid, he's not stupid in the typical sense of Artificial Stupidity. He's not poorly programmed so much as very well programmed to be "humanly" stupid. He even uses his chaotic nature to do one or two smart things that surprise GLaDOS, although he typically proceeds to undermine them with more stupidity. And he's too thick/well-programmed to be fazed by a Logic Bomb.

GLaDOS:He's not just a regular moron. He's the product of the greatest minds of a generation working together to create thedumbest moron that ever lived.

Artistic License  Astronomy: While on the Moon, we see one of the later Apollo sites, and the Earth, near the horizon. The Earth is always close to directly overhead at all the Apollo sites.

As much as the Space Core is happy to be floating in space at the end, the blowing of air out of the portal on the Moon should not have been near enough force to put it and Wheatley in orbit. They should've fallen to the Moon's surface. Taking this further, Wheatley does not have enough mass for the space core to orbit him, but it's more amusing this way (the joke is that he is that dense).

As noted below, the time between shooting at the Moon and seeing the glint is accurate for how long it takes for light to travel to Moon and back. The problem is that the projectile from the Portal Gun is slow enough that you can see it in mid-flight. At that velocity it would take it months to reach the Moon.

Art Shift: "Bendy", the two-dimensional stick figure protagonist of the PeTI DLC. That's not an exaggeration. Using portals to look at yourself shows that he is completely flat.

Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: In the PeTI DLC, one of the parallel Caves has apparently turned the staff of Aperture and himself into beings of pure energy: "Not quite what we were hoping for, but in the ballpark".

Ascetic Aesthetic: The modern test chambers are in this style, when they're not overgrown or broken by Wheatley.

Wheatley:(As Chell clutches to him to avoid being pulled into space) Let go! LET GO! I'm still connected, I can pull myself in! I can still fix this!GLaDOS:I already fixed it. And you are not coming back.Wheatley: Oh, no! Change of plans... Hold on to me! Tighter! Tighter! (Is knocked loose of the mainframe and hurled into space) GRABMEGRABMEGRABME!

At the end of Peer Review:

GLaDOS:*to P-Body and Atlas*Go get her!They enter a large roomGLaDOS:Oh. My. God! It's the bird! Run! I have no plan for this. Abort! Forget your training! Run! What are you doing? Why are you not running? Get back! She's at the controls! You're not killing machines, I lied about that. Run! Ah, Oh God. Abort, mission abort! Retreat retreat retreat! I warned you! Mission abort! Retreat! Oh God it's over we've lost! It's over!

Baleful Polymorph: Non-magical version. Wheatley "installs" GLaDOS into a potato battery (presumably from the science fair) after she pisses him off. Because potatoes can generate electricity, she's still alive, but they generate so little voltage that she can't really overtax herself (like say, getting too angry about her situation) or she shuts down briefly due to lack of power. Also comes with a Brick Joke, see below.

Belated Happy Ending: Surprisingly enough, Portal 2 is one for the Half-Life Series; The game's ending (which is heavily implied to be set several centuries or even millennia after Portal 1) has Chell arrive on the surface in what looks like an actively cultivated wheat field with healthy blue skies overhead, which basically means that the Combine were eventually defeated by the Resistance and the Earth is still habitable.

Big Door: The door to the old Aperture Science facility. The developers found this a highlighting feature of the game, having "the biggest door in video games!" Behind it is a wall, with a much smaller door and a few chairs.

Big Electric Switch: The Old Aperture parts have several of these. The most notable (though not the biggest) ones are the pumping station switches.

At one point, Wheatley attempts to show off by speaking Spanish through a translation program without knowing what he's saying. The Spanish translates to "You are using the translation software incorrectly. Please consult the manual." In the Spanish version of the game, Wheatley says that line in English: "It seems that you are using the translation tool incorrectly. Please check the manual."

The opera piece that the turrets sing in Italian for Chell as she leaves is an aria composed and sung by GLaDOS' voice actress, Ellen McLane, called "Cara Mia". The title translates in English to "My Dear" and the song's lyrics describe a begrudging farewell to a loved one.

In the beginning of the game, if you wait long enough to open the door to the Relaxation Chamber, Wheatley will speak in Spanish.

Chell finally escapes from the facility, but there's no one in sight and she only has the clothes on her back. If you think about it with that in mind, returning the Companion Cube at the end seems like a very cruel parting shot from GLaDOS, essentially saying "This is all the company you'll get from now on." It seems clear that the Combine were defeated, but as to the state of the world beyond that, who knows? Though at least she is standing in the middle of a field of evenly-grown wheat, so there is a very good chance of encountering someone living in what is at least an agriculture-capable society.

Wheatley is lost, alone and stranded in space (likely orbiting the Moon). All he wants now is to take it all back and apologize.

Blaming the Railroaded Player Character: A couple of examples that are played more for comedy than drama, as neither GLaDOS or Wheatley are particularly sympathetic and it's clear they are being unreasonable.

GLaDOS is constantly upset over you "killing" her in the previous game, spending a good half of the game flinging passive-aggressive remarks about it at you. This is despite the fact that in the previous game, your "escape" was set up in such a manner that you just couldn't go anywhere but straight to GLaDOS' room, with the only way to advance the plot being throwing her cores into fire. This is made all the more egregious by the fact that even if you deliberately attempt NOT to throw them into fire, GLaDOS will keep nagging you to do it with (unintentional?) reverse psychology.

At one point, Wheatley wants to detach himself from his rail (while being about twenty feet off the ground) and asks you to catch him before he hits the ground. Try as you might, you will simply NOT be allowed to catch him. You can even abuse the game's physics to make Wheatley land on your head, but even then it will not count as catching him, and you will be forced to just let him fall on the ground. Later, at the end of the game, Wheatley chews you out on it, reminding you about how you didn't catch him as if it was your fault and you deliberately let him hit the ground.

In a Call-Back to the first game, the announcer mentions that the Material Emancipation Grill may occasionally "emancipate the ear tubes inside your head".

A rare purely robotic example with the Frankenturrets in Chapter 8; literally the front part of two sentry turrets merged crudely to the back of a weighted cube. The way it struggles to move is like watching a crab hop around without its hind legs. The worst part is that you can tell it's in pain. They're also at least intelligent enough to be fried by a Logic Bomb, meaning that, sadly, they're smarter than Wheatley.

It doesn't help that whenever you pick one up, its "heads" are always facing you.

Pretty much anything Cave says in the recordings when you're in the old facility. Things along the lines of a possibility of your body being filled with tumors; coughing up (or shitting?) coal, your bodily fluids being turned to gasoline, being teleported without your skin, and opting to have scientists 'disassemble' your body, take out your tumors, and reassemble you.

Cave Johnson: Don't have any tumors? Well, if you sat on one of the chairs in the lobby and weren't wearing lead underpants, we took care of that too.

Bolivian Army Ending: Subverted. It looks like it's going to be this, but then the turrets start singing...

Booby Trap: On the Stalemate Resolution Button, the second time around.

Early in the game as Wheatley pops off the rail, he yells "catchmecatchmecatchme!" and at the end, as he gets sucked into space he yells "GRABMEGRABMEGRABMEEE!!"

Wheatley wakes you up in the first place to get away from the destruction of the facility due to a reactor meltdown. Guess what you have to stop happening due to his negligence at the end of the game.

The song that plays when you first meet Wheatley is remixed for when you send him into space.

Wheatley's From Nobody to NightmareFaceHeel Turn is signaled by the arrival of a chilling ten-note sequence. Once you're in space, and Wheatley's rule ends, underneath the higher frenetic notes, is the same sequence.

Averted with GLaDOS, who has learned from her mistakes in the first game. If not for your earlier sabotage, she would kill you outright.

GLaDOS:I hope you brought something a lot stronger than a portal gun this time.

Defied by Wheatley, who studies GLaDOS' previous loss to Chell and sets the arena up specifically to avoid her mistakes. Naturally, being the Intelligence Dampening Core, heproceeds to zig-zag it with a whole new slew of glaringly obvious mistakes:

Played straight when Wheatley forgets about the clear glass tube of Conversion Gel running through the arena, as well as the non-clear but still breakable tubes of Repulsion and Propulsion Gel, and Lampshaded after the fight.

Wheatley: "Oh, that just cleans right off, does it? Well, that would have been good to know. A little earlier."

Subverted, as Wheatley anticipates the possibility of losing the fight and booby traps the Stalemate Resolution Button.

Double subverted, as Wheatley's refusal to acknowledge the ongoing collapse of the Enrichment Center and ignorance of the primary ingredient in Conversion Gel is what opens up the vulnerabilities that allow Chell to finally win.

Boss Banter: Taken to new heights, from GLaDOS' renewed snarking to Wheatley's confused and increasingly livid ranting.

Bottomless Pits: This game features them and not even boots can save the portal device from breaking when falling into these.

Cave Johnson instructed his scientists to work on uploading technology after he became fatally ill from moon rock poisoning. He left instructions that if he died before it was ready, it should be used on his secretary Caroline... Whether she wanted to or not. This was ultimately how G La DOS was created.

One of the alternate universe Caves actually did succeed in uploading himself. He quickly went (more) insane and decided to "kill" Aperture. Cave Prime pulls you out of that universe, and resolves to cancel the GLaDOS project, confirming that "Earth 1" is in fact an alternate universe to the Portal 2 universe. Though he might have had it reinstated when he was dying and thought time was going backwards..

A wall sign in the old labs invites you to "KNOW YOUR ALLERGENS: Pollen. Animal dander. Plastics. Antimatter".

In one prerecorded announcement, Cave Johnson mentions that the old Enrichment Spheres are made of asbestos. "Let us know if you feel a shortness of breath, a persistent dry cough, or your heart stopping."

A meta example during the ARG, where GLaDOS literally invaded a bunch of Steam-based applications and made Portal-themed changes to them, such as turning items into Companion Cubes, and replacing their soundtracks with Portal-themed tunes.

Break the Haughty: Once Wheatley takes control of the facility, GLaDOS gets reduced to...a potato. Being forced to work with Chell as a result sets the stage for some significant Character Development.

In an early test chamber, the recorded messages mention that the Aperture Science Personality Cores can remain operational with power as low as 1.1 volts. Later GLaDOS mentions that the potato she's in barely produces 1.1 volts.

Early on in the game, Wheatley mentions that he jammed up the door mechanism by dropping some bird eggs on it, and freaks out when the bird in question starts flapping around him. Later the same happens to GLaDOS.

One of the possible apocalypse scenarios is "The world being taken over by an animal king", illustrated by a giant leopard-skinned turret with a golden crown. The same turret makes an appearance in the ending video... playing bass.

In the first game, GLaDOS makes the comment that "all Aperture technologies remain safely operation in temperatures up to 4000 degrees Kelvin." At the end of Portal 2, a charred companion cube (the one you supposedly incinerated in the first game) is thrown out of the facility.

Just after the first hard-light bridge test, the elevator you need to take at the end of a level has a large, fat turret sitting in it, which speeds off as soon as you see it. It comes back twice, as a hidden easter egg in chamber 16 and the ending video; both times it is the fat lady of the opera.

Wheatley offhandedly mentions a part of the facility that contains robots that scream for absolutely no reason, framing it as a ghost story. Fast forward to right near the end of the game, where GLaDOS, describing exactly how she's going to kill Wheatley, includes locking him up for ten years in the chamber she built "where all the robots scream at you".

The turret you can save from the redemption line is the same one Wheatley awkwardly ignores and tells you not to make eye contact with at the beginning.

Late in the game, the sabotage you did to the turret production line saves you again, as Wheatley sics a horde of defective turrets on you, completely forgetting about the sabotage he himself directed.

An interview with Eric Wolpaw revealed that Cave Johnson's line about missing astronauts would have led to skeletons visible on the Moon when you portal Wheatley up there.

At the end of the Peer Review DLC, the scarily competent individual GLaDOS has been preparing you to kill turns out to be the same bird that tried to eat her when she was a potato.

One of the parallel Universes in the level-creator DLC is ruled by a sentient cloud, as the Announcer mentions in the start of the main game.

But Thou Must!: You can't do anything but press the Stalemate Resolution Button. Both times. Whether you think it's a good idea or not. Similarly, you have no choice but to rescue PotatOS from the bird's nest, and even if you cleverly make it to the next level anyway, the game assumes you did.

Hilariously lampshaded by Wheatley early on when it comes to the game's linearity. Once he jumps off his Management Rail, he's ecstatic about his sudden freedom to go anywhere he wants. He then tries to get his bearings... and tells Chell to follow the Management Rail.

This very same section has Chell carry Wheatley through parts of Aperture's behind-the-scenes areas while he's talking her ears off. Those players who get fed up enough to try and throw Wheatley over the walkway railing will soon notice that the 'interact' button is disabled during that segment.

The Cameo: Atlas and P-Body make a brief appearance at the end of the single-player campaign. Before that, P-Body can be seen in one of Wheatley's test chambers.

Can't You Read the Sign?: Near the beginning of 1950s Aperture, a sign warns you not to fall down the elevator shaft. Sure enough, the only way to proceed is to fling yourself by falling down the elevator shaft.

Chaos Architecture: The Aperture Science Enrichment Center houses manufacturing facilities to build a variety of walls and standardized objects, arrays of articulation points to form those into test chambers, and a vast rail system to move those test chambers about the facility. This results in a maze of shifting test chambers. Even damaged test chambers can be rebuilt and replaced, or entirely new test chambers created at will.

Character Development: GLaDOS, throughout the second half of the game. It gets subverted at the end of the game when she claims to delete Caroline's memories and personality from her data banks. The credits song suggests she still feels an attachment to Chell and that the Caroline persona might still be around, though, so who knows?

Very near the start of the game, it is said that all Aperture Science personality constructs keep working with as little as 1.1 volts, the same amount a potato battery provides, which explains why GLaDOS is able to keep working when she gets installed in a potato.

It is revealed in one of the intermediate levels that the white Conversion Gel gains its properties from lunar dust. Later, during the final battle, Wheatley gains the upper hand, preventing Chell from replacing his AI core with GLaDOS'. When an explosion rips the roof off the facility, Chell uses the portal gun to blast a portal all the way to the Moon, sucking Wheatley, Rick (though he's never mentioned again), the Space Core and a good-sized portion of the facility out into space.

Also near the start of the game, GLaDOS mentions she has a sort of "black box quick-save feature" that forces her to relive the last two minutes of her death. Guess where Wheatley obtained footage of GLaDOS' death before the final battle?

Chekhov's Skill: At the end of the co-op campaign, ATLAS and P-body need to open a vault door. How do they accomplish this? By acting human, something GLaDOS complained about frequently.

Cliffhanger Copout: The ending of the first game does not quite match up with the second, even with the Lab Rat comic. The first game ends with GLaDOS exploding due to the incineration of the cores, Chell and GLaDOS landing on the surface, Chell getting dragged back inside, the cake not being a lie, the other cores waking up, and GLaDOS filing a report about not really being dead. The sequel reveals that the cores are separate entities and not vital components (so why the explosion?), GLaDOS' body changing shape and getting back inside the facility offscreen (Party Escort Bots like the one that dragged Chell?), the cake being ignored (though that part was a joke), most of the cores being cut (see What Happened to the Mouse? below), and GLaDOS actually being dead (well, besides reliving her death over and over) until revived.

Cloud Cuckooland: Basically the entire Aperture Science facility, considering that the only sane individual there is arguably Chell who only gets that consideration because she's the player character—this trope is even more present than in the original Portal, due to the fact that Portal 2now has more than two characters.

Doug Rattman: There are moments when I can almost see the underlying grammar of this place. An impossibility, some mad architect's opus - a relic from an age that never could have been. It's a metastasized amalgam of add-ons, additions and appropriations. Building itself out of itself. Beautiful and terrible - and like anything cloned from a cancer cell, probably immortal.

Cloud Cuckoolander: Cave Johnson's story is elaborated quite a bit in this game from the original supporting material. On the one hand, a lot of what we thought we "knew" about Aperture and Johnson turns out to be fabrication, but from what we hear of Johnson from the man himself, he still...had a screw or two loose. Much of which came from what seemed to be pure stubbornness in keeping Aperture alive. As the cost of testing and keeping the facility up and running grew, as he dumped more money into making the facility bigger and self-sufficient to recoup costs, you can hear his sanity slipping in his messages.

Combat Stilettos: Played with. Chell wears "Long-Fall Boots" which are visually similar to high-heels. She is required to wear them to cushion very fast, very high falls in order to prevent her legs from being crushed.

Computer Voice: GLaDOS, Wheatley, the Turrets and the Cores obviously, but as you navigate the first ruined test chambers a new, male, voice guides you and later announces general information about what's going on in the facility. It responds to what GLaDOS and Wheatley say in very limited fashion so was most likely the voice of the Aperture Science computer systems before GLaDOS came along, and is a back-up system for when she's unavailable.

Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: GLaDOS and Wheatley (especially Wheatley) have a lot of things to say if you linger in any one area for too long. You'll miss a good 75% of the dialogue in the game unless you take your time. In fact, it's literally impossible to hear all the dialog in a straight playthrough. In the final boss fight, there's so much dialog that Wheatley will actually talk off the entire final timer if you let him.

Continuity Drift: A lot of the Enrichment Center's aesthetic design was given an upgrade between games, even though all of the systems that could've replaced it were all deactivated.

It's slightly jarring to walk into a test chamber that you played in the first game and find it completely in disarray. At one point you navigate the old Test Chamber 19 backwards, crawling out of the ruined Victory Candescence room and through a trench that used to be a moat of toxic goo.

In one of GLaDOS' "new" test chambers, you catch a brief glimpse of the Aperture Science High-Energy Pellet device before it's replaced with a Thermal Discouragement Beam emitter. Once you take a good look around, you'll realize that it's because you're in the old Test Chamber 06, simply retooled to work with the Thermal Discouragement Beam instead of the High-Energy Pellet.

The poor faithful Weighted Companion Cube makes several appearances.

May also count as a song Title Drop: After Chell survives the stalemate button booby trap, Wheatley furiously cries "What?? Are you still alive?! You've got to be joking!"

In the first game, GLaDOS says "DO touch it." after the Morality Core pops out of her and she tells Chell not to touch it because she doesn't know what it is. At the end of the game, after Chell puts all three corrupted cores into Wheatley and Wheatley and GLaDOS are arguing to Chell over whether she should press the Stalemate Resolution Button to give GLaDOS back complete control over the facility, one of her lines is "DO press it."

During the final battle against Wheatley, he says that "This place would have been a triumph!" but for you.

At the beginning of the game, after you've fallen and obtained the Blue Portal Gun, Wheatley asks something along the lines of "Are you alive? That's important, should've asked that first. Right, well I'm going to work under the assumption that you're still alive..."

When Wheatley is trying to hack into the neurotoxin controls, he says "Let the games begin." Later, when Wheatley is in control of the facility and trying to kill you, if you escape his first Death Trap and continue onwards, he repeats the previous quote.

When you escape the death trap at the start of chapter 9, Wheatley starts trying to convince you to come back in a very similar manner to GLaDOS from the original Portal, when you escaped the fire pit.

One of the bits of garbage GLaDOS hurls at you is one of the old radios, playing the exact same version of "Still Alive" as the radios in the first Portal. As a callback to the "Transmission Received" challenge added to the first game, you can bring this radio to a hidden Rattmann den in the level for an Achievement.

The door you open to trigger GLaDOS's trap says "GLaDOS EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN AND CAKE DISPENSARY". This is also the only reference to cake in the entire game.

You get the dual portal device from the bottom of the fire pit where GLaDOS tried to kill you in the first game. It seems the portal gun really can survive temperatures of up to 4000 degrees Kelvin.

Within the PeTI DLC, there's a few parallel universe Cave Johnsons who do a reworked version of his introductory speech from the main single player campaign, these consist of Cave as head of a "mating ritual to forestall the end of days", the Aperture Holo-Science Jungle (where he is the Hobo King), Aperture Paranormal (for "wizards, witches [and] crystal healing doctors") and a prison for intergalactic criminals.

Cave Johnson: Space-criminals, political prisoners, exiled planetary leaders; you're here because the galaxy needed a place to put you, and this is it. So, who's ready to stay here until they die? I assume you already met each other on the hyperdrive over...

Another parallel Cave does the Mantis-man speech, except that it's mantis beings being injected with human DNA rather than the other way around, complete with insect-y voice filter.

Continuous Decompression: When Chell opens a portal on the Moon, there is a continuous decompression effect until the portal is shut. Spaceships and the like may have a limited volume of air, but this portal has to equalize the pressure of an entire planetary atmosphere. Sucking away this much air takes lots of time.

Convection Schmonvection: If you trust the signs on the walls, the Aperture facility testing shafts extend some 5 km (3 miles) below ground. At that depth the ambient temperature would be something like 70 ºC (160 ºF) — way more than enough to kill anybody. However, maps of the place suggest that even as far down as that, Cave Johnson had built massive structures - on the lowest levels being made of asbestos, a fantastic insulator.

Cool and Unusual Punishment: GLaDOS mentions a room entitled "The chamber where all the robots scream at you", also briefly alluded to by Wheatley in an earlier part of the game.

The epically massive doors that seal off the old Aperture Science facility. The commentary ventures the notion that they're the biggest doors ever depicted in a video game. It also notes that they deliberately placed a little tiny door behind the big one as a joke.

Cores-and-Turrets Boss: Inverted with respect to the first game; to beat Wheatley, you have to put the cores back.

Conspicuous Consumption: After Perpetual!Cave and Dark!Cave find a "moneyverse" each, Perpetual!Cave spends some of the new near-infinite funding on several gold objects, as well as putting it towards test chamber construction.

Crazy Awesome: Aperture Science uses this concept as their business and research model. Don't want to deal with your workers leaving their cubicles while on duty? Corral them with Frickin' Laser Beams. Think the advance of technology is too slow? Take it leaps beyond your current decade just because you can. Don't like dealing with the laws of physics? Invent your own! And of course the one concept that started it all: don't like dealing with mildew-growing shower curtains? Create a quantum tunneling device that lets you instantly travel between any two surfaces you want.

Crazy-Prepared: The Enrichment Centre is designed to continue testing its subjects in the face of The End of the World as We Know It, even with most of the facility in ruins. Recordings detailing how to cope with all manner of different Apocalypse How scenarios are provided for the player. The machinery is even designed to run on minimal voltage so it can continue to function if power is scarce.

Creepy Child: In one of Perpetual Testing clips, Cave views Greg's daughter as one of these.

Creepy Monotone: GLaDOS seems to have found an interesting midpoint between her two voices in the first game. She sounds more like her early, robotic voice with just a hint of the deeper, sexier voice she used in the Final Battle. This makes almost everything she says have just a tinge of bitterness, which is probably the point. Later in the game, she abandons her monotone and begins speaking with a more human cadence. Until she supposedly deletes Caroline, when she speaks in a cadence somewhere in between.

Like the first game, the ending song plays over a text screen that displays the lyrics in the form of a computerized personnel file report.

The co-op campaign ends with GLaDOS scanning each of her new test subjects, with the names of the creators being assigned to each human. Occasionally while scanning, rather than a human being in the pod, there will be a cube, or a turret, or the three cores from the single player Boss Fight, and at the end, while listing voice actors, each actors character(s) stands in the pod - A turret with GLaDOS, a painting of Cave Johnson, cores and a defective turret, Wheatley and then Chell.

Curse Cut Short: The curse in question is relatively mild, but probably necessary to maintain the E10+ rating.

Cave Johnson: Black Mesa can eat my bankrupt—

Caroline: Sir, the testing?

Cute Machines: There's Wheatley and the other cores, the turrets, the co-op mode robots, and GLaDOS herself after being reduced to a potato.

Cut Lex Luthor a Check: If Cave Johnson weren't completely insane (and the world hadn't freaking ended within a few years), the inventions of his company would have made him the richest man on Earth. Completely negating the possibility of injury from falling, functional and compact teleportation technology (something Black Mesa, to the time of Half-Life 2, never managed reliably), real AI (albeit murderous in some incarnations)? Amazing. To a lesser extent, the "Heimlich Counter-Maneuver", while a commercial failure, seems to have been quite popular with the government, who somehow managed to use it to let terrorists choke to death on chicken dinners. The commentary track confirms that Aperture Science's Fatal Flaw isn't their science, but that they are horrible at marketing. And, well, basic product safety.

Cutscene Power to the Max: In the trailer faux-advert demonstrating the shock absorbing boots, Chell engages in acrobatic awesomeness, leaping, diving and somersaulting through portals. In game, her jump animation is fewer than 10 frames long.

At the end where the Stalemate Resolution Button's booby trap blows up, you would die on the spot in any other context, but instead you get thrown across the room and pick yourself up, in one of the few true cutscenes in the game.

Chell's initial check-up at the beginning of the game is heralded by the cheery Aperture Science fanfare. The next time she's woken up, the fanfare is corrupted/garbled and the surrounding music is in a minor key.

The triumphant music that begins to play when Wheatley is enjoying himself as the new controller of Aperture (which already turns bleak by itself) returns in the final boss theme, except with a much faster, frantic pace and is distorted through various synthetic tones.

Also, the music that plays at the bottom of the incinerator after GLaDOS drops you in is also recycled as the chord progression of the final boss theme.

There is also a four-note "danger" theme that, not surprisingly, tends to show up when Wheatley is doing something particularly stupid and/or risky. However, this theme generally isn't focused on too much - it's merely an interjection that plays occasionally during some of the other themes. The one time it manages to become a central theme of the music, with the force of an orchestra playing it? The Part Where He Kills You.

When you go to the Moon, once the music starts up again, underneath the frantic high notes, you can hear the eight ominous notes that repeat in "I AM NOT A MORON!"- already pretty dark the first time!

Death by Irony: Wheatley is defeated by corrupting him with other personality cores, which is exactly what Wheatley did to take over GLaDOS' body in the first place. Also ironic to the player in that it's the exact opposite of what you did to defeat GLaDOS in the first game. Even more so when you consider that according to GLaDOS, Wheatley himself is a core whose primary purpose was to sabotage GLaDOS.

Cave Johnson's death is a subtle example: moon dust is in fact hazardous to humans in real life due to the lack of erosion from being in a vacuum causing moon dust particles to be razor sharp and capable of wreaking havoc on the respiratory system when inhaled. What other Earth material is dangerous for similar reasons? Asbestos, which Cave built the old Aperture testing chambers out of, not only ignoring the obvious health hazard but also trademarking the slogan "Asbestos is harmless!"

Cave Johnson: Let us know if you feel a shortness of breath, a persistent dry cough or your heart stopping, because that's not part of the test - that's asbestos.

Death Is Cheap: The two robots in co-op mode are uploaded into a new body whenever they die, as illustrated by the trailer. One of the robots dismisses its destruction (and the other robots' role in it) with a wave of its hand. The Portal 2 team say this is a major reason for using robots as the co-op mode characters. They wanted your (many) deaths at the hands of badly-planned maneuvers, incompetent or jerky co-players and just larking about to be funny and more consequence-free than showing humans being crushed, shot or falling in acid and so forth.

Death Trap: GLaDOS and Wheatley use them with reckless abandon this time around, partly out of frustration for how hard it is to kill Chell. Wheatley also introduces the non-standard death option.

GLaDOS: Well, this is the part wherehe kills us!Wheatley: Hello! This is the part where I kill you! Chapter 9: The Part Where He Kills You.Achievement Unlocked: The Part Where He Kills You (The achievement's subtitle: "This is that part".) Soundtrack: The Part Where He Kills You.

Determinator: According to Chell's personnel file, she's on the far side of the bell curve for tenacity.

Lampshaded lightly (and possibly unintentionally) by Chell's potato experiment; whereas all the other experiments show dead, shriveled potatoes, hers has become massively overgrown and is probably responsible for part or all of the vegetation that's taken over the complex... making it one very determined potato!

Cave Johnson had a particular always-move-forward attitude that informed the way he ran Aperture, in conjunction with the fact that he had all the sanity of a waffle. He was convinced that, sooner or later, everythingnote Up to and including the Aperture Science Quantum Tunneling Device Aperture produced could be brought back around to somehow improving shower curtain technology, which is what Aperture theoretically produced. If they couldn't, they'd still find some way to grossly misapply it.

There are quite a few lines of dialog that you won't hear unless you wait a very long time in some areas, or commit blatant Violations of Common Sense.

If you manage to get yourself trapped in a test chamber, whoever is acting as Mission Control will comment on it and rescue you. With biting sarcasm, in GLaDOS' case.

If a player who knows in advance that the ground under the portal gun collapses as s/he goes toward the pedestal tries to jump backward, they'll be pushed back by Invisible Walls.

There's also an in-universe example—Aperture Science apparently saw fit to make a recording that would allow them to continue running tests after The End of the World as We Know It.

Another in-universe example is that in the endgame, the timer counting down the imminent destruction of the reactor gets destroyed in the fracas. The system has a built-in "Reactor Explosion Uncertainty Pre-Emption Protocol" which will blow everything up in two minutes..

There is a secret Rattmann den that shuts itself up after a certain amount of time. If you go in there during commentary mode, you'll see a commentary node. You'd think it's about the Rattman's Dens. It's not. It's nonsensical, ear-screeching noise that will make you wish you had your ear-canals emancipated. It's the sound translation of an image file, which details the pre-announcement Portal 2 ARG. You know, the one that also used image-to-sound converters.

Did Not Do the Bloody Research: For an E10+ game, Wheatley likes to use the word "bloody" quite a bit. He's quite the cheeky little personality sphere.

Disc-One Final Boss: You confront GLaDOS at the end of Chapter 5. It's not the end of the game by a long shot.

Disposable Vagrant: After the "1968 Senate hearings on missing astronauts", Aperture was nearly broke and was forced to hire street bums to stumble through the test courses for each — with a potential bonus if they allowed Aperture to perform horrific medical experiments on them along the way. The architecture of the test chambers reflects this shift, as there are signs informing test subjects to keep moving, not leave belongings behind, and not touch the glass. For bonus points, they only get their money if they fill out the forms and sign legibly. As with the earlier tests, there are strong implications that few, if any, survived.

GLaDOS:I'm not going to lie to you, the odds are a million to one, and that's with some generous rounding.Fact Sphere: The probability of you dying violently within the next 5 minutes is 87.61 percent.

The comments Wheatley makes while watching you and GLaDOS get through the tests makes it sound like he's enjoying it a bit too much. GLaDOS confirms it, stating that the system gives the AI a euphoric response for concluding every test, that gets smaller as you gets used to it, and Wheatley doesn't have the intellectual capacity to overcome its withdrawal symptoms. To drive the point home, that chapter ("The Itch") is titled "Addiction" in the French version.

GLaDOS:Remember when I talked about smelly garbage being useless? That was a metaphor. I was talking about you.

Wheatley: You two are going to LOVE this big surprise. In fact, you might say you're going to love it... to death. Love it... until it kills you. 'Til you're both dead. (Beat) Hehehe. Alright? I don't know if you're, uh, picking up on what I'm saying here, but... GLaDOS:(sighing)Yes, thanks. We get it.

On the purely cosmetic side, the Robot Enrichment Center allows players to download an array of hats, skins, and so forth, which can be applied to the co-op robots. Of particular note are the larger selection of gestures, such as the thumbs-up P-body does at the end of the game.

A free DLC with playable content was released on October 4, 2011 containing a new co-op campaign, and leaderboards/challenges for least time and portals, like in the first game. Another DLC was made available to those with the Razer Hydra controller (released in June), adding chambers where the portal gun has properties similar to the Physgun in Garry's Mod.

Another DLC titled "The Perpetual Testing Initiative" adds a creative gameplay mode where players can design their own test chambers and share them over Steam.

A fourth Mobility Gel, Adhesion Gel. There's still enough code left over for a skilled programmer to fake it; had it made it into the game, it would have allowed the player to walk on walls or ceilings. It was removed because testers got disoriented and couldn't complete test chambers where they needed to use it.

With the Peer Review DLC, this gel was actually replaced with Reflection Gel, which causes any lasers that hit it to bounce off. However, it, too, didn't make it into the game, likely because making puzzles with redirection cubes was easier than making them with the gel.

Digging around in console commands has uncovered a semi-functional Rocket Turret; while it doesn't track the player, it shoots a rocket immediately after something enters its laser sight (think Claymores from the original Half-Life in turret form).

There was also the Pneumatic Diversity Vent, a vacuum and the exact opposite of the tubes that deliver cubes. It even had its own video made for it like the other test elements, however it was soon realized that it was useful for sucking in turrets but not much else.

Durable Deathtrap: Subverted or played straight depending on what part of the game you're in. The Enrichment Center as we know it is dilapidated and becoming overgrown by plants, and in some places bits of the testing rooms are malfunctioning. When you go deep underground to the earliest iteration of the Enrichment Center, all the catwalks leading to the test chambers are busted, but the test chambers themselves are in perfect working order, as are the Material Emancipation Grills, the pumps dispensing Mobility Gels, and the recordings from Cave Johnson. Granted, unlike most examples of the trope, these facilities have only had a few decades to a century or so to decay, instead of the usual thousands of years, but it's still damn impressive.

DVD Commentary: Or, technically, Developer Commentary, is used along much the same lines as the first game.

Early-Bird Cameo: In chapter 8, test 15, when Wheatley realizes there's no exit for the test so he hastily creates one by destroying a wall, you can see P-body running off through the Test Chamber exit.

Earn Your Happy Ending: Though at first it may appear to be a "Shaggy Dog" Story, if you examine it closely Portal 2 ends on a hopeful note. GLaDOS is back in control, and claims to have deleted Caroline and her conscience, but lets Chell leave peacefully, and the ending song hints that Caroline isn't quite gone. And without the events of the game, GLaDOS would still be the monster she was at the beginning, experiencing her death over and over, while Chell would be asleep indefinitely. Without Wheatley, nothing would have changed that.

Eldritch Location: Doug Rattmann thinks of Aperture Science as one in the tie-in comic Lab Rat.

Rattman: [It's an] impossibility, some mad architects opus  a relic from an age that never could have been. [...] Beautiful and terrible  and like anything cloned from a cancer cell, probably immortal.

Esoteric Happy Ending: Invoked in the Co-op campaign ending, which is treated as a very happy ending, even though Atlas and P-Body get blown up due to the fact that they've outlived their usefulness, they've done so because they just uncovered thousands of humans who were stored beneath Aperture, and those humans are now going to be put through test after test until they die painfully in the name of science. Why is this treated as a good thing? Because it means the bots have saved science, so as far as they're concerned, they've succeeded.

Blaperture!Cave: They tell me you people are conducting some anomalous materials research that could result in a resonance cascade, so I'm shutting that down before you idiots end the world. A resonance cascade. You're supposed to be scientists! Use some common sense!

As the Peer Review DLC reveals, GLaDOS is revolted by "Your Mom" jokes and finds them merely annoying than funny.

Evil Laugh: Your first clue that putting Wheatley in charge may not have been such a hot idea. Or rather, the final confirmation after two minutes of nagging suspicion, as he's been talking about how small you are and how big he is.

When you sabotage the turret line, the defective turret used as the new template lets one out whenever a proper turret is rejected.

Evil Sounds Deep: Wheatley thoroughly enjoys being evil, starting with the declaration, "Let the games begin," and reaching a crescendo in the Final Boss lair. The first word, "Welcome," is spoken normally, followed by "TO MY LAIR" being spoken in a far deeper tone with an echo for dramatic effect.

Evil Is Hammy: All the antagonist characters come with a healthy side order of cheese, but Wheatley steals the show and runs with it after being plugged into the mainframe.

Evolving Title Screen: The title screen changes depending on what chapter you're on. The screen for the first third of the game is the overgrown Aperture ruins, which change to a refurbished version after GLaDOS's awakening, then to old Aperture, then to the facility falling apart as the reactor overheats, and after beating the game to Wheatley floating in space.

Exact Time to Failure: Each phase of the Final Boss battle has a distinct timer, to the point that when the timer for the reactor explosion is disabled, the Enrichment Center activates a self destruct sequence to remove the uncertainty of not having a countdown until everything blows up.

Expendable Alternate Universe: Exploited Trope - Cave Johnson in the Perpetual Testing Initiative taps into the multiverse in an surprisingly-successful attempt to solve Aperture's funding crisis concerning test chamber construction. This comes up later after he and Dark!Cave both find universes where everything is made of money. Both Caves take control of a universe each, solving the funding crisis.

Expository Gameplay Limitation: At the end of the game, after Chell falls for Wheatley's trap, she ends up immobilized while Wheatley takes the opportunity to monologue. The player can still aim and fire the Portal Gun, however, and if Chell shoots the Moon, Wheatley will end up sucked into the vacuum of space.

Expospeak Gag: Wheatley is full of these. During the opening sequence, he attempts "a manual override on this wall", after mistaking it for a docking station. In other words, he repeatedly rams a room into the wall until it breaks. Later, he asks Chell to turn her back while he "hacks" a door open. He smashes the glass in the window. (This can be seen if you fire a portal on the wall ahead of you.)

Fanservice: Many people, especially those who hadn't played the first Portal, figured this was why Chell neglects the upper portion of her jumpsuit◊. In fact it's pretty hard to get a good look at her at any point during the game even if you're trying to. Developer commentary said the idea was that she's "rolled up her sleeves" and means business this time.

GLaDOS notes that she has a "black box" function in her programming that saves the last two minutes of her life. The entire time she was "dead", she had to constantly relive Chell killing her again and again.

GLaDOS then says that she doesn't know what she will do if Chell dies during testing. She suggests she would have to take up a hobby... like resurrecting the dead.

GLaDOS also mentions she feels death is too good for Wheatley. See Rasputinian Death.

Feathered Fiend: Well, at least from GLaDOS's point of view, for at least part of the story.

Feigning Intelligence: Basically all Wheatley does. After getting tired of being called a moron, he spends one test chamber playing classical music and (claiming to be) reading Machiavelli.

Wheatley comments that Aperture Laboratories is even bigger than the Enrichment Center would suggest, and that the lower levels go down for miles. Guess where you eventually end up exploring?

If you save the turret from redemption, it will start babbling a sequence of seemingly random lines that don't seem connected in any way. Everything it says is actually plot-relevant, including quotes from Cave's lemon speech ("Get mad!", "Don't make lemonade!"), referencing the lower levels of Aperture ("The answer lies beneath us."), spoiling The Reveal ("Her name is Caroline. Remember that.") and mentioning Prometheus, who gave Man knowledge and was punished by being cast into the underworld and pecked at by birds - which is exactly what happens to GLaDOS (tells you what Wheatley was built for, is knocked down into Old Aperture for it and, yes, pecked by birds.)

This very turret is the first turret you encounter at all, long before you get to interact with it. It's the one in the large tube to your left that freaks Wheatley out directly after he jumps off his Management Rail in the beginning of the game.

Near the beginning of the game there's a rather unmemorable line about "All personality constructs remain fully functional at 1.1 volts." A couple chapters later there are a few wrecked science fair displays featuring potato batteries. A few rooms after the potato batteries, GLaDOS (a personality construct) is shoved into a potato. Which produces approximately 1.1 volts of electricity.

The painting you see at the beginning of the game shows a nice countryside during the day. After the Time Skip, the scene has changed to a night one and the painting has a prominent full moon in the sky.

Several of the Rattmann's dens have a poem about eyes, with some of the eyes drawn as phases of the Moon. In the area where you pick up the first portal gun, hanging from the roof is a mural depicting the Moon's phases.

One of Cave Johnson's pre-recorded messages mentions that the Conversion Gel used to create instant portal surfaces was developed from moon rocks, which are an excellent portal conductor.

During the end boss, the Space personality core is the first one you attach to Wheatley in order to get his body to reject him. It constantly rants things like, "space, space, gotta go to space!"

In the Lab Rat comic, the other scientist who was talking with Rattmann about GLaDOS compares artificial intelligence to other scientific frontiers like - among other things - moon launches in the Sixties. "I'm telling you, this is our generation's moon shot." Rattmann cynically states that he'd rather go to the Moon than deal with AI. Of course, this may just be a coincidence, considering how much the story was progressed at that point.

When the VA of Wheatley's placeholder voice, Richard Lord, was reassuring the public about Stephen Merchant replacing him, he mentioned that he was "over the Moon" with the decision. Again, this may just be a coincidence, as this statement was made early in development.

One of the Fact Core's "facts" is that "The Moon orbits the Earth every 27.32 days."

When Rick plans a one-liner for when Chell finishes off Wheatley, he tells her to "Stand back, 'cuz I'm about to zing him into space."

Also in the final battle, Wheatley responds to the Space Core's ranting with "NOBODY'S GOING TO SPACE, MATE!"

Though the one that really takes the cake is a Dummied Out line by Cave Johnson in which he explicitly threatens to use a weaponized portal to the Moon against someone, saying: "You hear me? I invented portals! I can put a doorway on the Moon and another into your parking lot! Lets see how many patents you steal when youre floating around in outer space, you" This was probably Dummied Out because it was a bit too obvious.

After the whole affair concerning the Moon is resolved, Chell is treated to an incredibly awesome opera sung by what's probably the first and only overweight sentry turret in gaming history. This very turret showed up quite a while ago already, in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment at the end of the first hardlight bridge test chamber where it is sucked away by the pneumatic dispatch system to make way for the elevator.

The song that is added to the BGM when you hold the Companion Cube in an early test chamber is the turret opera song.

The method you use to take down the first boss is repeated almost precisely for the last boss. With a bit of a twist, of course.

In 'Bring Your Daughter To Work Day', if you listen closely, you can hear a small bit of Wheatley's Leitmotif, which will return after the core transfer when he goes bad. And where do you hear 'Bring Your Daughter To Work Day'? By the potato batteries.

A moment during one of the old Aperture tests takes place while Cave Johnson's pre-recorded message is describing a test chamber. GLaDOS subconsciously responds to a question Cave asks his assistant, Caroline.

Despite all the humorous highlighting — which sometimes bordered on the levels of lampshading — it's played perfectly straight in this line explaining why GLaDOS didn't care about building up a tolerance to the euphoric response to testing:

GLaDOS:It didn't matter to me, I was just in it for the science.

GLaDOS invokes this trope in a line included in the trailer.

GLaDOS:Look. We've both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster.

The easiest is the person from the Valentine's Day trailer, who still has the diamond on their lap.

The later ones are more quick- one person's watching porn on their computer (at work, even), and the other's watching the still-unreleased "Meet The Pyro" from Team Fortress 2.

A single frame during the montage of custom test chambers show that one of the chambers has "TEST II" written on the side using white panels.

Check the disclaimer at the bottom left. It changes several times throughout the course of the video and, while occasionally hard to read, is pretty hilarious too.

Frickin' Laser Beams: The "Thermal Discouragement Beams" in Portal 2 act like normal lasers, save for being fully visible. They also live up to their name, as they don't instantly kill you but rather hurt enough to keep you from simply walking through them. Amusingly, the graphic displayed when they are introduced implies that they were developed as a tool to keep office workers at their desks. Alternatively, Aperture was just idiotic enough to fire the laser through offices, just because of where they decided to build the main device.

G-Rated Drug: GLaDOS states explicitly that there is a mechanism in the facility-controlling machine that releases a euphoric sensation when testing. While GLaDOS claims to have built up a tolerance, no longer affected by it, when Wheatley gains control of the facility, he shows a sort of addiction to testing, which is fine... until he builds up a tolerance and goes looking for a better high.

Zig-Zagged. The single player campaign ends with GLaDOS kicking Chell out via elevator ride. This trope comes into play when the elevator stops at several turrets, which instead of firing upon her, start singing. This continues up several more floors, culminating in an entire choir of singing turrets. The choir is then forgotten as the elevator makes it to the surface, revealing blue skies and a field of wheat. And a singed companion cube being spat out from the elevator as well.

In co-op, you open a giant vault discovering thousands of humans in stasis and as soon as the robots do their Victory Dance they are blown up and the credits roll. The blowing up makes sense, but seriously, what?

Game-Breaking Bug: In the test chamber where Wheatley makes an exit from another room, if you break his monitor before he pulls out the exit, it'll miss the animation and make the test impossible to solve.

Genius Loci: In PeTI, there is an alternate universe in which Cave Johnson is the entire planet the testing facitliy is build on.

Giant Animal Worship: One of the hypothesized apocalypse scenarios is "Animal King" where such a being rules over mankind (represented by a giant leopard-print turret).

Gigantic Moon: The Moon in this game is significantly larger than in real life. Might come in handy...

Gilligan Cut: Wheatley, having taken over the facility, is making Chell do test after test again. GLaDOS remarks he'll run out eventually, as she never stockpiled test chambers. Cue Wheatley announcing his discovery of a sealed wing containing hundreds of test chambers. With skeletons.

GLaDOS:"Skeletons." Right, I guess I did stockpile some tests...Just as mementos, though.

A God Am I: There's an implication that the Aperture mainframe may be programmed in such a way that any AI plugged into it becomes megalomanically insane, or at least obsessed with running experiments.

Cave Johnson: Those of you helping us test the repulsion gel today, follow the blue line on the floor. Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. The good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men! Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts. GLaDOS:Okay, so the bad news is that the tests are my tests now. So they can kill us. The good news is... well, none so far, to be honest. I'll get back to you on that.

Gory Discretion Shot: The closest thing to violence in the game is obscured behind panels when it happens. GLaDOS is "decapitated" during the core transfer, and sounds very much in pain.

When Wheatley is plugged into GLaDOS's body, the walls glower at you with red light.

Gretzky Has the Ball: Wheatley informs you that he's holding all the cards... and they're all full houses.

Wheatley: Never played cards, been meaning to learn. [...] Ace of fours! The best hand, I imagine.

Hand Wave: The reason why GLaDOS can't give you any advice or hints in Chapter 8 is because she's programmed to be unable to give hints to test participants, otherwise she receives an electric shock. The writers added this because they needed a justification for why she wasn't giving you advice to clear the final few test chambers. note (Funny note: originally they were going to have the bird follow her around, eating the parts of the potato that contained her puzzle resolution memory, but couldn't develop the tech to pull it off.) Instead, this is used to set up a moment where she tricks Wheatley into giving you a hint for the puzzle you just solved, so he gets shocked.

Happy Birthday to You!: Changed to "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow", as par for the trope. GLaDOS hums the tune a few chambers prior to your "surprise", which just makes it that much creepier.

Hard Light: One of the new physics elements, platforms made of this can be redirected through portals and block turret fire, among other uses.

HeelFace Turn: GLaDOS, after Wheatley goes mad with power and takes over the facility. Not that she had much of a choice, being a potato and all. Also a case of Enemy Mine.

HeelFace Door-Slam: Wheatley finally figures out he's sorry for trying to murder Chell when he's stranded in space and, in all likelihood, will never get to say it to her face.

Hemisphere Bias: The shot of Earth is a NASA stock photo, showing North America. While it's the right continent, the angle is wrong.

Heroic Mime: Chell, the main character. Lampshaded with frequency and gusto throughout the game. According to Word of God, Chell can talk. "She just chooses not to, what with the robots all being dicks. Why give them the satisfaction?"

When Wheatley is testing Chell for brain damage and asks for her to talk, the pop-up tutorial claims that pressing the jump button will make Chell speak. As always, it just makes her jump, which leads Wheatley to conclude that Chell does, in fact, have brain damage.

Wheatley: Are you alright? Yes or no? Game Hint:[Jump] TalkWheatley: Ok, what you did there was jumping...say Apple, aaa-pple. Game Hint:[Jump] Say Apple

In Chapter 4, Wheatley is contemplating a Big Red Button that might open a door. If you wait long enough, he will ask you for your opinion on the matter, and then engage in some epic navel gazing about the meaning of your lack of a response.

In Chapter 9, Wheatley mocks you about how you're so bossy, standing there in smug silence and various other ramblings.

None of the personality cores seem to want to mention anybody else's names. There is exactly one exception: the Fact Sphere has some rather unkind things to say about the Space Sphere and the Adventure Sphere.

Chell is never addressed by name by anyone, period except in the beginning of the turret opera, where a Multiple Reference Pun alludes to it. There is exactly one, easily missed place where it is written down.

Wheatley never addresses GLaDOS by name within the game, only referring to "her" and "she".

GLaDOS never refers to Wheatley by his name. She only refers to "he", "him", "metal ball", and variations on "that little idiot".

"Ever wondered what a parallel universe you might be like? Well, stop wondering, because youre just Hitler. Every parallel universe ever. You. Hitler. We cant figure it out. Anyway, if you meet him in the next test, dont kill him. I know, I know. But trust me, itd be bad."

GLaDOS insults Wheatley to get him mad... which works, but also causes him to "install" her into a potato out of spite.

The Final Boss's bombs are used to help beat it, in a manner similar to the rockets from the first game.

Hollywood Darkness: Many unlit areas still have decent visibility due to the fact that the void of the facility seems to glow. There are two truly dark sections, once in Chapter 4 during "The Surprise", and one part in Chapter 5 during "The Escape". Oddly, in the latter case, as soon as the flashlight turns on, the ambient light does too. In Chapter 6, there is absolutely no explanation for the well-lit nature of the ancient ruins four-plus kilometers beneath the surface.

In the Old Aperture test shafts, you frequently find elevators to the surface. Sadly, they are all out of order.

Zigzagged in the single player campaign ending: You think you'll finally be free when GLaDOS tells you about everything the she got taught by remembering being Caroline, and how saving you at the end taught her where Caroline lived in her brain. Then she deletes Caroline, and you get worried again. But no, she's letting you go anyway. Then your elevator to the surface stops in front of 4 turrets. But they're not here to kill you, they just want a song.

How the Mighty Have Fallen: The entire Old Aperture sequence is designed to convey how this happened to Cave Johnson, almost entirely due to his own hubris.

Cave Johnson: Fact: the key to any successful cooperative test is trust. And as our data clearly shows, humans cannot be trusted. The solution? ROBOTS! Then... fire the guys who made those robots and build BETTER robots!

Played with at the end, where P-Body shoves Atlas into the fire, just like the humans did.

Cave Johnson: BAM! Robots gave us six extra seconds of cooperation. Good job, robots!

Ironically averted in co-op: GLaDOS muses that most humans aren't monsters, just good test subjects, determining the ratio to be about a million to one.

Human Popsicle: Ten thousand Enrichment Center test subjects were kept in storage this way, woken up automatically every fifty days to perform routine physical and mental maintenance exercises. In the years between Portal and Portal 2, all but Chell have apparently died of neglect.

However, the end of co-op reveals that there are hundreds more humans in cryonic storage, waiting to be tested.

In the Peer ReviewDLC, it is revealed that GLaDOS managed to kill all of them in a week.

Humiliation Conga: GLaDOS gets run through this. First you "kill" GLaDOS in the previous game, then you replaced the turret drones with useless defective ones just before she tried to kill you, then her supply of neurotoxin gets ruined, then she gets replaced with Wheatley, thenshe gets turned into a potato and after that the potato gets carried off by a bird that partially eats her and sticks her in its nest. It gets to the point that she eventually decides at the end that killing you is simply too much trouble and lets you go.

Hypocrisy Nod: Wheatley, who is trying to figure out how GLaDOS gets you to finish tests, tries making fun of your weight and (possible) Parental Abandonment. GLaDOS, who had earlier thrown fat and adoption jokes at you with gusto, counters Wheatley's insults by asking what's wrong with being adopted, and pointing out that Chell isn't really fat. But then she says to Chell:

Hypocritical Heartwarming: GLaDOS really loves to insult Chell, calling her 'fat' and 'adopted'. But she will not tolerate Wheatley being mean to Chell when he tries those same insults. Not so much because she cares about Chell, but because insulting her is her job.

GLaDOS:For the record, you are adopted, and that's terrible. But just work with me.

Idiot Ball: Wheatley doesn't just firmly hold it in his grasp for most of the game. Being a dumb-as-brick AI housed in a spherical shell the size of a small medicine ball, he quite literally is an actual idiot ball. May count as a Stealth Pun on the part of some devs.

I Fell for Hours: After Wheatley freaks out and knocks you down the elevator shaft, you find yourself falling for long enough to have a (rather one sided) conversation with GLaDOS about what Wheatley's true purpose is. She even lampshades it.

GLaDOSSince it doesn't look like we're going anywhere... well, we are going somewhere. Alarmingly fast, actually. But since we're not busy other than that, here's a couple of facts.

Ignored Epiphany: At the end of Portal 2, GLaDOS says saving Chell triggered a surge of positive emotion...which allowed her to figure out where the source of those gooey human emotions was located in her memory banks, so she deletes it. Or so she says.

GLaDOS mentions that the light used to make hard light bridges comes directly from the sun, and that if you rubbed your cheek against one it would be like standing outside in the sunlight. And then your hair would catch fire, so you shouldn't actually do that.

One of Cave Johnson's last acts before he died was ordering his engineers to develop "combustible lemons" so he could burn down the houses of people who believed in the axiom "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade". He's just that kinda guy...

Incompetence, Inc.: Although Aperture Science did manage to invent a portal gun... while trying to make a better shower curtain. And repulsion gel! While trying to make a diet supplement. And an army of mantis men! For ... some reason?

The practicality of their inventions seems to have eluded them as well, most evident with portals. It took them somewhere between forty to fifity years to realize that portals had more potential than just a shower curtain slash test device. Even after they did perfect the technology they never got around to releasing it and took it upon themselves to create a massive network of pneumatic tubes to transport stuff around the facility, which is probably even more expensive than just using portal projecting panels. They did realize it was cheaper to portal in laser beams rather than build hundreds of giant lasers, but still it's a bad call.

Not only is the facility not OSHA compliant as explained below, but the vintage portions that were sealed away seem to be actively trying to be dangerous.

Cave Johnson:We're just throwing science at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Informed Flaw: Wheatley is allegedly scientifically engineered to be the world's biggest moron, and only come up with bad ideas. While he certainly isn't very bright, and has a lot of bad ideas, he also manages to outwit Chell and GLaDOS several times. Then again, he was Aperture Scientifically engineered, and they tend not to do things straight.

In Spite of a Nail: In the 'Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC, most of the alternate universe Cave Johnsons sound the same, have the same personality and are still head of Aperture. Even in a universe where mantises are the dominant sapient species, a mantis-Cave is still the head of Aperture. Only one alternate universe Cave isn't the President of Aperture, but even he's still employed by them.

It's specifically said (and written) in the trailer that the alternate Earths selected for the PeTi need to be ones in which A) civilization is advanced enough to conduct testing and B) Aperture Science exists. Apparently where there's Aperture, there's always Cave Johnson.

Instant Cooldown: At the end of the game, GLaDOS is able to bring the Enrichment Center's nuclear reactor back from the brink of a meltdown to full operational status. This is foreshadowed by the BSODs you see on the monitors as you go through Wheatley's test chambers - all she had to do was press a key... metaphorically, anyway.

Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Broken rubble and panels not fully retracted are surprisingly able to block the player's movement. It's also impossible to jump over the catwalk railings, but a break in the railings almost always indicates where you do need to jump, or at least place a portal.

Inventional Wisdom: The old Aperture Science facility gives ample evidence of this principle being in effect; the most Squick-inducing being the Repulsion Gel, which was originally designed as a dietary aid that would make food bounce off of your digestive tract, and the Propulsion Gel, which speeds food through the body so quickly that it can't be digested.

Ironic Echo: At one point, Wheatley, prior to attempting to hack, remarks "Let the games begin." Later, after you escape his deathtrap, he repeats it somewhat more menacingly.

Cave Johnson asks Caroline to "Say goodbye, Caroline," and she humorously responds with "Goodbye, Caroline." At the end of the game, when GLaDOS (supposedly) deletes Caroline from her brain, she repeats the line "Goodbye, Caroline" with a calm but malicious tone.

"Grab me! Grab me! Grab me!"

GLaDOS's insults to Chell about her being fat and abandoned by her parents at birth is repeated in a similar fashion in the Peer Review DLC. GLaDOS "adopts" a group of baby birds, telling them that they are fat and were abandoned.

It's a Small World After All: Wherever you aim your portal gun at when you shoot the Moon, you'll end up at an Apollo landing site, despite the fact that there are only six Apollo sitesnote (Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17. 13 didn't make it.) on the entire near face of the Moon (and only three with a Lunar Roving Vehicle, if you want to get specific about which site).

The alternate Cave Johnsons in the PeTI say the weirdest things, and the player isn't immediately informed of the Alternate Caves.

Alternate!Cave: I've just been notified that one of our test subjects may have angered the Sentient Cloud by beginning testing early. Now, as you all know, the cloud has banned all camera technology—hates getting its picture taken. So this'll have to be on the honor system: Will whoever started testing early please go outside so they can be consumed by the Cloud.

A lot of people who've played the first game but not the second have been quite confused by pictures of Chell with a potato.

I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: One of the most common interpretations for why GlaDOS sent Chell away in the ending, based on the closing songs, is that she is doing a favor for her best friend. Well, more "safe" than "happy", but same general concept.

Wheatley:You know what? This plan is so good, I'm going to give you a sporting chance, and turn off the neurotoxin. I'm joking, of course. Goodbye.

Tropes K to R

Karma Houdini: At the end of the game, not only is GLaDOS "still alive" and as unhindered as when the first Portal started, but, as of the co-op ending, she has MORE human tor-er, test subjects. Then again, as previously mentioned she might also have spent the time between games reliving her own death, repeatedly. So even if she managed to kill 100,000 people, she's also more than paid for that crime with the number of deaths she was made to suffer herself. Also, she was a potato at Chell's mercy, which is probably her idea of Hell.

Late to the Tragedy: Chell, waking up centuries after the Enrichment Center apparently stopped maintaining itself. Of course, this particular tragedy is one she herself caused by destroying GLaDOS in the first game.

The first thing Wheatley asks you to do once you let him in is to speak. The game, lying, tells you that the jump button will make you speak. When you press the button and jump instead, Wheatley assumes that you have indeed suffered brain damage, also lampshading Chell's Heroic Mime status.

GLaDOS makes frequent references to Chell's weight, with one of her earlier comments expressing surprise that Chell has somehow gained a few pounds despite being in extended hibernation. Thing is, she's right. Compared to her earlier model in the original Portal, Chell doesn't look nearly as malnourished.

At the very end of the game, while Wheatley is floating with Space Core in space, he says "The End". Cue the game going back to the menu.

The space core, being the first one you shove into Wheatly could be a subtle way of saying "Press space to jump on the blue gel".

Leitmotif: Wheatley gets one in the latter half when he is in control of the facility, taken from "I AM NOT A MORON!" mid-FaceHeel Turn. It ranges from four high/low notes or ten low notes cropping up ("TEST", "Omg, What Has He Done?", "The Part Where He Kills You", "Bombs For Throwing At You", "Your Precious Moon") to sometimes both the high and low bits together in remixed form ("Omg, What Has He Done?", "The Part Where He Kills You", "Bombs For Throwing At You"). The four-note pieces generally signal a new development/idea, while the full-blown bit overall indicates his state of mind.

Living Forever Is Awesome: GLaDOS thinks living forever is just peachy, and repeatedly taunts Chell over the measly sixty or so years she has left. It's also in her credits song: "They woke me up, so I could live forever. It's such a shame the same won't happen to you."

Load-Bearing Boss: A rare and weird case of an inversion. You need to defeat the boss to stop him from blowing up the facility through negligence.

Loads and Loads of Loading: While hardly a bad offender, the loading screens are more noticeable than for the original game. It's much milder when actually in-game, however - loading a map from the main menu can take quite a while, but loading the same map from the one before it takes only about a tenth as long, as does loading auto/quicksaves from within the same map.

Logic Bomb: In the old Aperture Science facility, there's a poster on a wall listing various paradoxical statements in the event of a rogue AI. Too bad you're mute.GLaDOS tries one against Wheatley, but he is literally Too Dumb to Fool.

And if you pay attention, the Logic Bomb actually works on the Frankenturrets. That should tell you something.

Logo Joke: During the earlier parts of the game, every loading screen shows an Aperture Laboratories logo. Later, being knocked out of the modern areas, the logo changes to an older version, reading Aperture Science Innovators, and when you return to the modern Enrichment Center, the logo is defaced to read Wheatley Laboratories.

Lost in Transmission: The prerecorded message giving advice in the event that an Animal King has taken over Earth cuts out just as it's about to tell you what to do.

Luck-Based Mission: One of the achievements is for catching a Weighted Storage Cube in a particular test chamber before it touches the ground after being doused in Repulsion Gel. It's pure blind luck if the cube will even bounce in your direction to begin with. note It can be done easily, however, by alternating Repulsion Gel with water to partially break the glass box where the cube is held, then jumping into said box.

Luke, I Am Your Father: Sort of. One of the "Bring Your Daughter To Work Day" experiments is labeled with Chell's name and mentions a "special ingredient from Dad's work," implying that she's the daughter of a male scientist who is, or simply raises her with, an Aperture employee. Some players have speculated that Caroline was her mother, although making the timeline work requires invoking superscience or adoption, given their respective ages.

Once you get to the abandoned Test Spheres in Shaft Nine and find the remains of 50s-era Aperture, it becomes obvious this was the case in Cave Johnson's era, as nearly everything in this section of the game is gloriously lifted from 40s-50s-era pulp sci-fi.

In the co-op campaign, GLaDOS wonders if testing that isn't inherently deadly can even be considered science. Note that said testing would be deadly to humans, but she doesn't have any to run the courses.

Magic Countdown: The timer in the Final Boss fight. At the start, it's stated that you have six minutes before the facility explodes, but each phase of the battle is independently timed regardless of how long you spent in the previous phase, giving you potentially as much as twelve minutes to work with. And that doesn't even count the Take Your Time that happens immediately afterward, and however long it takes GLaDOS to fix the reactor after you win. It's an awfully forgiving six minutes.

Meaningful Echo: In the last 1950s recording, Cave says "Say goodbye, Caroline", and she good-naturedly responds "Goodbye, Caroline." Later on, after Cave's final recording (complete with hacking cough and him outright saying that he's going to die very soon), GLaDOS says "Goodbye, sir" in an obviously sad tone of voice. Later, when GLaDOS supposedly deletes Caroline, she says "Goodbye, Caroline" in a relatively neutral tone.

Meat Sack Robot: This is Zig-Zagged. The homicidal AI named GLaDOS is forcibly removed from her normal robotic body and plugged into a potato. She's still able to communicate but she's completely dependent on others. This is subverted though as it's implied she's not an AI but the downloaded mind of a human being.

Mind Hive: GLaDOS appears to be this — she claims to experience the personality cores as maddening, constantly babbling voices in her head. After The Reveal, she becomes aware of Caroline's personality as "the voice of a conscience" within her mind as well.

Mind Screw: Due to an entity the developers used to make level design easier, it's possible to get levels like this.

Minimalist Cast: Same as the first game, though downplayed by the comparatively increased cast. Just add a talkative British-accented personality sphere, two robots with no fear of death, broken versions of the sentient turrets from the previous game, three corrupted personality spheres (the first an insufferable supposed know-it-all, the second a brash & arrogant adventurer, and the third a space-obsessed lunatic), and recordings of the... differently sane company founder (and his cheery secretary).

Mobile Maze: There were hints of it in the original game, but Portal 2 demonstrates that most of Aperture Science is a giant facility full of moving parts capable of rearranging themselves. After some time has passed, the facility cleans itself up nicely.

GLaDOS:Federal regulations require me to remind you that this next test chamber... is looking pretty good. That's right, the facility is completely operational again.

Mood Whiplash: The otherwise somberstinger at the end of the game is pretty much ruined by the Space Core's squees of delight over finally being in space.

Depending on your point of view, Cave Johnson's last scene might count as well. His famous speech about the lemons, possibly the funniest moment in the game, is followed shortly by what for all intents and purposes is his last will and testament. GLaDOS bidding him a resigned "Goodbye, sir" at the end is almost poignant.

In the last chapters of the game, the test chambers start featuring excursion funnels. Which wouldn't clash with the ambient mood of desperate urgency (since the player has found out that Wheatley's negligence is going to result in a nuclear meltdown and every second probably counts) if the excursion funnel music didn't sound like this.

Morality Chip: This plot element from the first game is extended. GLaDOS (without the Morality Core) states that while she had heard voices from the Cores her entire life, she now hears a conscience. And it is absolutely terrifying, because it is her own voice.

According to the trailers, the turrets have one. And another device to suppress it. And another device to resolve the stalemate those first two chips always create... just because.

Once Wheatley takes control, Chell is left with a dilemma—team up to put the archnemesis she just defeated back in control (and begin their cycle all over again) or keep Wheatley in control and everybody blows up. But Thou Must! does not begin to describe it. The segment of the game leading up to the fight with Wheatley is even called "Morton's Fork" to drive the point home.

In a lighter example, GLaDOS dismisses suggestions of human testing subjects for 'less lethal tests', because they couldn't have been sure they were lethal if they survived to write the suggestions.

All the cores will talk your ear off, but Wheatley definitely takes the cake. His entire dialogue in the game, played continuously, goes on for an hour and a half. GLaDOS is no slouch in this one either, though.

As stated above, Wheatley can actually outtalk the destruction of the facility if you let him during the final boss fight.

Multiplayer Difficulty Spike: The Co-Op mode is a lot more challenging than SP, thanks to the puzzles requiring four portals to solve rather than just two.

The Multiverse: The "plot" of the level-creator DLC "Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC" revolves around it: Cave Johnson's been scamming the Multiverse by tricking them into building his test-blueprints, and you're sent bouncing around it solving them. Some of the parallel universes are... interesting.

Cave Johnson won Best Curtain Rod Salesman of 1943, one of his greatest accomplishments.

Congratulations! You just opened up the entrance to the original facility. It even comes with flashing flood lights! Wrong door. It's the tiny door behind the gigantic one.

Mundane Solution: The Mobility Gels all wash off in minimal amounts of water. If Wheatley had known that earlier, the boss battle would have been a whole lot quicker.

Mundane Utility: The Portal Gun, a device so amazingly useful it would revolutionize the world — revolutionizing transport, providing inexhaustible power, breaking relativity — is used to test the efficacy of food additives, among other things. At least, they started out as food additives...

There's an easily-overlooked doorway in the old portion of Aperture that leads to what appears to be a dry-dock that once housed the Borealis. The achievement you get for finding it calls it "the missing experiment".

One of the humans frozen in cryogenic storage found in the ending to the Co-op game is listed as Adrian Sheperd. Make of that what you will.

A couple of cut ideas from the main game make it into parallel Universes in the level-editor DLC: Cave Prime has an assistantcalled Greg, and in one Universe is a dead man put into a computer (as was the original plan for him before it got leaked.)

Never Recycle Your Schemes: Though in this case, it's more "never recycle your boss fight tactics." GLaDOS dispenses with her previous boss fight tactics this time around, settling for just trapping and killing Chell, but this fails because Chell and Wheatley sabotaged the turrets and neurotoxin. When Wheatley becomes the main villain later, he looks over GLaDOS's tactics and revises them to make himself more formidable. He doesn't succeed, but he comes closer to killing Chell than GLaDOS did.

"Alright, this next test may involve trace amounts of Time Travel. So, word of advice: If you meet yourself on the testing track, don't make eye contact. Lab boys tell me that'll wipe out time. Entirely. Forward and backward. So do both of yourselves a favor and just let that handsome devil go about his business."

None of the test chambers from the trailers appear unmodified in the game, though many do appear in some form (either with a different visual style or with some elements changed or removed).

One feature for Portal 2 in the trailers, the "Pneumatic Diversity Vent," was never used at all (at least, not in any puzzles). In the trailer, Chell shoots a portal underneath a pneumatic tube to suck up turrets, loose wall tiles and other things. This proved too difficult to balance for gameplay purposes, so in the final game it only gets used for scripted scenes.

Highly pedantic, but this trailer implies that ATLAS and P-body both use blue/orange portals, when in actuality ATLAS uses blue/purple and P-body uses orange/red. Then again, they were both using an ordinary portal gun in that trailer.

If you watched the trailers of GLaDOS reawakening, you were probably one of many who were freaked out when claws descend from out of nowhere to grab you and Wheatley, since that part wasn't in said trailers. The dark atmosphere and music, also absent from the trailers, didn't help.

When you replace GLaDOS with Wheatley, who goes crazy and whose stupidity ends up almost destroying the facility.

The co-op bots help GLaDOS find more human test subjects, after she spent the entire campaign complaining that robots (and plants) are no good for her tests because they can't suffer or die.

Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: If Wheatley had never knocked Chell and PotatOS into the Aperture of the Past levels, the Repulsion, Propulsion, and Conversion gels that caused his defeat would never have had their pumps activated, allowing him to effectively do whatever the hell he wanted with Aperture... Provided the core's meltdown didn't annihilate the place.

No Celebrities Were Harmed: Valve has more or less admitted that Cave Johnson is a mix of the crazy genius and need for showmanship of Nikola Tesla combined with the charisma and presentation skill of Ted Turner. The recorded announcements from the 1952 facility also strongly resemble the announcements Walt Disney recorded for the 1964 World's Fair (and Cave Johnson's hopes for avoiding death by scanning his brain into a computer are reminiscent of Walt Disney's rumored posthumous cryogenic preservation).

Cave Johnson: All right, let's﻿ get started. First test involves something the lab boys call "Repulsion Gel". You're not part of the control group, by the way. You get the gel. Last poor son of a gun got blue paint! Ha ha ha! ... all joking aside, that did happen. Broke every bone in his legs. Tragic, but informative! Or so I'm told." "The lab boys just informed me that I should not have mentioned the control group. [...] I pay the bills here, I can talk about the control group all damn day!"

No-Damage Run: One co-op achievement requires you to beat Level 4 without dying. It's not the easiest thing to do, since pretty much any screw-up is punished with death.

There are signs in the 70s-era Aperture labs ordering employees to warn their superiors if they see several authorities, first among which are OSHA inspectors.

There are dozens of posters with warnings about various dangers around the Facility.

The unnamed male computer announcer tells you near the beginning that the safety measures for the test chambers have been deactivated to preserve reactor integrity. But testing will continue!

This mirrors what GLaDOS in the first game says about that very same test chamber:

GLaDOS:Warning devices are required on all mobile equipment. However, alarms and flashing hazard lights have been found to agitate the High Energy Pellet, and have therefore been disabled for your safety.

At the beginning of the old test facility, and at the end after you leave, there are condemnation notices posted on the walls. These are dated 6/15/1961, but the dates painted on the Repulsion Gel and Conversion Gel facilities indicate that construction and testing were ongoing at least as recently as 1982.

Made more apparent by Cave Johnson being openly indifferent when it comes to participant safety:

Science isn't about "Why?", it's about "Why not?!". You ask: "Why is so much of our science dangerous?" I say why not marry safe science if you love it so much? In fact, why not invent a special safety door that won't hit you in the butt on the way out because you are fired!

Nostalgia Level: After the intro, the game starts by putting you back in the test chambers from the original, but overgrown and half ruined by the intervening years. You quickly diverge from that path, however.

And after you retrieve the dual portal gun from the incinerator, you walk through a narrow trench to the elevator. If you look around before getting in, you can see that you were actually backtracking the entire length of test chamber 19.

Off the Rails: While the game itself is still completely linear, there's much more freedom to explore the environments, and, in-universe, large chunks of the game have you zig-zagging on and off the rails that various characters are trying to get you to follow. Chell's tendency to do this is apparently one of the reasons GLaDOS (and later Wheatley) get so frustrated with her.

Orange/Blue Contrast: Almost anything important to gameplay involves this: the two ends of the portal; the Propulsion and Repulsion Gels; the pushing and pulling states of the excursion funnels; the off and on states of the lights indicating a connection with the Big Red Buttons; the highlights on Atlas and P-Body; even the "eyes" of Wheatley and GLaDOS. The test chambers in Portal were deliberately made mostly cool blues in contrast to the warm oranges of the behind-the scenes-areas.

Order Versus Chaos: GLaDOS and Wheatley, respectively. Both get to take their turns at being the good one and the evil one.

Origin Story: Chapters 5 through 7 take you (literally) deep into the origins of Aperture Science. Pre-recorded dialogue in Chapter 7 reveals that GLaDOS was built as an attempt to achieve Immortality through Brain Uploading for Cave Johnson's secretary Caroline, whom he left in charge of Aperture Science after his death.

Other Me Annoys Me: In the Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC, Cave is infuriated by what Dark!Cave's test subjects do.

Overly Long Gag: The game manages to make one in the span of a few seconds with "The Part Where He Kills You." The line is repeated twice in a row in the scene, followed by the chapter title, which is the same quote. There's also an achievement and achievement description with the same name, and the music track that plays during the scene has the same name as well.

Override Command: Played with at the end of Chapter 1. Wheatley is trying to stop GLaDOS from reactivating, but since he doesn't know the code, he starts brute-forcing it.

Wheatley: I'll just hack it, not a problem. Ok, AAAAAA. That's — I thought that was gonna be it; I'm surprised. AAAAA...C. Wrong again? That's surprising...that's...wait, I didn't do B, did I? We should be making a note of these. Have you got a pen?"note The line was shorter and more straightforward in the original trailer, and cut back down to such in the final game.

Parodied in the final boss battle where Wheatley, in an effort to stop the meltdown, may correctly guess the correct password. He promptly deletes the Emergency Heat Venting Protocols. This also says something about Aperture's passwording tendencies.

Becomes a Brick Joke at the end of the game. Needing to hack another password, he doesn't bother being sequential and guesses randomly... which actually produces the right password.note In a meta sense, this has a connection with the ARG. He's quite pleased at his first successful hack.

People Jars: The "Relaxation Chambers," one of which houses Chell up until the start of the game. The co-op mode explores this element further.

During the escape sequence. GLaDOS offers to facilitate your escape by quickly creating a puzzle room. It's a trap, of course, but you've been playing so long by that point you might have a case of lab rat mentality and just waltz right in. You even get an achievement, just for the devs to rub it in.

Better yet: Later on, Wheatley makes it very obvious that after the last test chamber, he's got a nasty surprise in store for you (of the murderous variety). Then, two chambers before that, the game sets up a simple Aerial Faith Plate puzzle...where the Plate unexpectedly flings you sideways, and Wheatley decides to hand you the surprise a few chambers early.

At one point, Wheatley offers you a "Death Option"—ride a conveyor belt into a crusher of your own volition before you get to his lair and he'll have to kill you himself. Since falling for obvious traps twice before each got you an achievement, you might think Rule of Three applies and you'll get one for taking the death option. Nope, all you get is bemused dialogue from Wheatley because he didn't really expect that to work.

Some of the signs in the ancient bowels of Aperture Science tell test subjects to be careful because lawsuits are expensive, replacements hard to come by, and investigations bad for business. There are also signs instructing employees to notify a supervisor in the event they spot an undercover police officer or OSHA inspector, and offering Logic Bombs in case of a rogue AI.

GLaDOS at the end of the single-player campaign.

The best solution to a problem is usually the easiest one. And I'll be honest. Killing you? Is hard.

Preorder Bonus: In the Steam preorder you get a free copy of Portal, in case you didn't already have it (or if you do, you get a giftable copy).

Press X to Die: At one point, an obvious trap shows up and Wheatley warns you about it. You can still fall for it if you want.

Near the end of the game, Wheatley simply asks you to get crushed by nearby, easily avoidable machinery.

Professor Guinea Pig: Cave Johnson had no qualms about testing his inventions on himself. This of course led to his death by Conversion Gel poisoning. In fact, by the end of the 80s, Aperture Science was bankrupt and couldn't recruit test subjects, so it began testing all of its products on its own employees, with a corresponding negative effect on retention.

Prop Recycling: In-universe, P-Body is a modified turret, while Atlas is a modified personality core.

Pulling Themselves Together: The game puts on a visual showcase by having the entire Enrichment Center do this after GLaDOS wakes up. The scene where she is reactivated was in one of the trailers used to sell the game.

Punctuated Pounding: Done when Wheatley smashes you and GLaDOS into a pit after GLaDOS pisses him off.

Punny Name: One of the alternate Cave Johnsons from the PeTI DLC is referred to as "Dark Cave".

Rage Against the Heavens: Cave Johnson has one of these in one of his last pre-recorded public messages, after he found out he'd been poisoned by ingesting moon dust. GLaDOS's reaction doesn't help either.

Cave Johnson: All right, I've been thinking. When Life Gives You Lemons..., don't make lemonade. GLaDOS:Yeah.Cave Johnson: Make life take back the lemons back! GLaDOS:Yeah!Cave Johnson: Get mad!note Discerning players may note that this line is foreshadowed by the Oracle Turret near the beginning of the game.GLaDOS:Yeah!Cave Johnson: 'I don't want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these?!' GLaDOS:Yeah, take the lemons...Cave Johnson: Demand to see life's manager! GLaDOS:Yeah!Cave Johnson: Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! WITH THE LEMONS!GLaDOS:Oh, I like this guy!Cave Johnson: I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that BURNS YOUR HOUSE DOWN! GLaDOS:BURN HIS HOUSE DOWN! Burning people! He says what we're all thinking!

The Enrichment Centre is capable of testing even in the event of an apocalyptic scenario, and contains helpful pre-recorded messages detailing how different varieties of apocalypse might affect testing. The place is pretty wrecked though, which initially looks like an aversion of the trope, but once power is restored, GLaDOS is able to repair and rebuild it, at least superficially, in a matter of hours.

The original Aperture Science facilities introduced in Chapter 6 are astonishingly functional considering their apparent age. Sure, plenty of stuff has fallen apart, but the electricity still works, most of the lights turn on, and the magnetic tapes storing Cave Johnson's prerecorded messages sound like they're brand new. While there are Hand Wave explanations for the functional state of the modern Enrichment Center (nanobots!), there is no such justification given for the sealed-off parts.

Railroading: A lovely little lampshade in the game opening: No rail to tell us where to go! This is brilliant. We can go wherever we want! Just hold on, where are we going, seriously. Hang let me just get my bearings. Umm, just follow the rail, actually.

Caroline (and all her accompanying backstory) was added to the sequel because they needed a character to play off of Cave Johnson, but they didn't want to hire a new voice actor for one or two lines.

All dialogue related to cake was deliberately removed from the game because the Portal team were so sick of hearing about it. There are at least two brief visual references, though: there's a drawing of GLaDOS taunting Chell with it near the first portal gun, and the fake door that GLaDOS uses to trap Chell says, "GLaDOS emergency shutdown and cake dispensary".

Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: All the characters with dialogue are either AI's, presumably with plenty of processor power devoted to proper diction, or speaking through prerecorded messages. This is actively averted, however, by Wheatley, whose colloquial and Buffy Speak-laden dialogue* His speech is even rife with filler words, crutch words, false starts, and stammering. is intended to come across as very "human" and personable — except when he's trying to sound smart or confident.

GLaDOS gives one to Wheatley after his betrayal, when she finally realizes what he really is:

GLaDOS: (to Wheatley) I know you...Wheatley: Sorry...what? GLaDOS:The engineers tried everything to make me behave...to slow me down...once they even attached an intelligence dampening sphere on me...it clung to my brain like a tumor, generating an endless stream of terrible ideas...Wheatley: Nope! Nope! Not listening! GLaDOS:It was YOUR voice!Wheatley: No..no you're lying! GLaDOS:Yes...you're[[ the tumor! You're not just a regular moron...you were designedto be a moron!Wheatley: (completely flipping out) I AM NOT A MORON!!! GLaDOS:YES YOU ARE! YOU'RE THE MORON THEY BUILT TO MAKE ME AN IDIOT!

In a slightly different scenario, just as Wheatley goes power-crazy, his normally-blue eye briefly turns yellow. Anybody who knows the color of GLaDOS's eye knows immediately that something bad has just happened.

Reed Richards Is Useless: Just one of Aperture's inventions would have revolutionized the world, if only they'd figured out how to sell them properly (and make them safe).

Restraining Bolt: Similarly to the Morality Core from the first game, Wheatley was made to suppress GLaDOS' intelligence. There are also several restraining bolts hardcoded into the Aperture Science mainframe: one forces the AI to conduct tests and stimulates a euphoric response to subjects completing a test; the response diminishes in intensity over time as the AI builds up a resistance, as mentioned above. Another zaps the controlling AI if it tries to give hints. Yet a third apparently prevents the AI from reconfiguring the mainframe chamber to eliminate the manual core replacement apparatus.

Retcon: Much of Cave Johnson's backstory is changed from the info that was released at the time of the original Portal. Instead of dying as a result of mercury poisoning, he now became sick as a result of ingesting Conversion Gel, although that part could be blamed on Johnson being an Unreliable Narrator. In the old story, he proposed the idea for the portal gun while he was on his death bed. However, in Portal 2, all of the test chambers in the original levels of the facility require the use of a portal gun, even the ones that were constructed when Johnson was still young.

Due to the staff who made Portal being sick to death of "The Cake Is a Lie", all of the bottom-right corner images of cake in the original test chambers you see in Portal 2 are gone completely, replaced with an image of a person above two rotating crusher columns.

Retraux: The '50s◊ and '70s◊ versions of the Aperture Science logo fit well with those eras' design aesthetics.

Robo Speak: GLaDOS' voice here is somewhere between the sexy croon at the end of Portal and her original, very computerized voice. It gets more tinny after she gets stuck in the potato. All the other voices, except for those of the original turrets that carry over, are an aversion.

The developer's commentary states that Valve intentionally made the smartest AIs sound the most robotic, so that Wheatley, the dumbest character in the game (or ever) sounds the most human and personable. Casting him with a British accent was part of this, as according to their audience research, Americans associate a British accent with being smart. To Britons, however, Stephen Merchant has a West country accent, usually associated with being pleasant but not too bright. Which is basically exactly what Wheatley is.

Rule of Perception: When you shoot a portal to the Moon at the end, you see a Twinkle In The Sky shortly after the shot hits, as portal effects travel at the speed of light; it takes 1.4 seconds for the shot to get there, and 1.4 seconds for the twinkle get back. However, nothing starts getting sucked through the portal into the vacuum of space until shortly after you see the twinkle - presumably, the formation of the portal connection itself also propagates at the speed of light.

Turrets falling into various implements of destruction, such as incinerators and crushers.

GLaDOS calling Wheatley a moron.

The (apparently singular) bird that continually harasses the AI characters. First mentioned in passing by Wheatley as part of a Noodle IncidentHand Wave about his survival, it appears three more times in the main game and once again in the DLC.

Potatoes. Aside from the obvious, apparently, Cave won a Spirit of Idaho award for his promotion of Potato Science from the National Potato Board.

Cave Johnson has a curious fixation on tumors. Seriously, just count the number of times they're mentioned during his pre-recorded messages.

Of course, there is an achievement for falling into the trap, aptly named "Good Listener", followed promptly by a reload. If you're playing in Challenge Mode, she not only tricks you with the room, but also a fake finish line as well, which disappears when you touch it.

Shapeshifter Baggage: The Scaling Cube from the Sixense DLC has this problem. Adjusting its size increases its mass. Thus, a normally harmless cube can be made into a giant slab capable of crushing turrets like bugs.

The final testing environments have openings revealing a seemingly endless panorama of test chambers, which crumble and collapse the closer you get to the end.

Schizo Tech / Decade Dissonance: Invoked intentionally, the middle third of the game takes place in a section of Aperture Science that had been sealed off sometime in the sixties or seventies. You go from 20 Minutes into the Future to offices filled with typewriters, punch-card computers and rotary telephones.

In one of the test chambers, GLaDOS tells Chell not to take anything with her due to a missing Emancipation Grill. Of course, she wants you to attempt it so she can taunt you some more. You get an achievement for it, too.

While Chell is carrying him across a seemingly bottomless pit, Wheatley tells her not to look down. She doesn't respond, naturally, but he immediately falls for it. Twice.

Screens Are Cameras: Wheatley appears to be able to see through several of the video screens dotting various parts of the facility. In fact, there are a couple of parts where he reacts in pain to any of them being damaged. He later becomes jumpy whenever a flying cube almost hits them.

Cave: The lab boys just informed me that I should not have mentioned the control group. They're telling me I oughtta stop making these pre-recorded messages. That gave me an idea: Make more pre-recorded messages. I pay the bills here, I can talk about the control group all damn day.

Science Is Bad: They have even more fun with the trope than in the first game, with Cave Johnson angrily telling an employee who asked if the tests could be a bit safer to invent a safe door that won't hit his butt on the way out, cause he's fired. And of course there's GLaDOS who openly questions if the co-op tests with robots who can't die or feel pain is really "science". Aperture just seems to have its own definition of the practices it actually refers to.

Self-Destruct Mechanism: Helpfully provided as a backup in case a nuclear meltdown is imminent but you don't know when it will happen.

Sequel Escalation: The first game was so short, it was practically a proof-of-concept demo that got by with a unique mechanic and hilarious writing. The second is full-length, and include loads of new features, including co-op.

Because the co-op levels are unlocked based on the player with the most experience, it is possible for a first time-player to complete the final level before doing any others. Consequently, said player will then have every other chamber unlocked regardless of who they play with, since they have registered progress in the last chamber.

The Enrichment Center is in fact part of a much larger complex of factories and testing facilities located in a gargantuan cave network built out of what was originally salt mines near and under Cleveland, Ohio, that Johnson acquired in the 1940s. While the scale of the caves in the game are... a bit exaggerated, the Cleveland salt mines are a completely real thing. Oddly, the game itself Retcons the mines to be located in Upper Michigan, and there were never any salt mines there. There is exactly one salt mine in Michigan, located about 1200 feet beneath Detroit. Interestingly, salt-mining in Detroit began before European explorers ever set foot on what is now Michigan soil. Valve's retcon, however, locates the salt mine in Michigan's upper peninsula, which in real life has iron, copper, and a few gold mines, but no salt mines.

The speed of light is approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. Portal effects travel at around the speed of light. It takes just under 1.4 seconds for light to reach the Moon. Do the Final Boss fight and get a stopwatch ready. Note that this almost fell victim to Reality Is Unrealistic before Valve figured out how to sell it. A Twinkle in the Sky is not so realistic, but used for Rule of Perception.

Cave Johnson was fatally poisoned by lunar dust. Lunar dust really is a horribly abrasive substance that will kill you if you inhale too much- The symptoms you hear in his recording even resemble the effects of silicosis, which is very similar to the effects of exposure to lunar dust.

The area you shoot the final portal at is near the Apollo 15 Moon landing.

One of the Logic Bombs a sign advises you to use on rogue AI, "Does a set of all sets contain itself?", is often claimed to be a misquotation of Russell's paradox. It isn't; rather, it's a updated form of the paradox made in response to an Obvious Rule Patch to set theory in response to the original version of the paradox.

Shut Up, Hannibal!: During the Wheatley tests and ensuing escape, there are multiple opportunities to cut off some of his rants by smashing something (sometimes yourself) into the giant screen he broadcasts from. It can be rather satisfying, and earns you an achievement if you get enough of them.

Skyscraper City: GLaDOS's chamber is the epicenter of Aperture Science, and a place of prosperity and ambition. Naturally, this being a science fiction game, it is balanced on a rather thin pillar overlooking an enormous precipice despite its importance.

Some of My Best Friends Are X: When Wheatley makes an attempt at insulting Chell, he relies on GLaDOS' method of calling her fat and adopted. When GLaDOS messes with him by asking what's wrong with being adopted, Wheatley, after failing to come up with a good reason, falls back on this stock phrase.

Spanner in the Works: According to GLaDOS, Chell is this. The Lab Rat tie-in comic makes this explicit; she was initially disqualified as a potential test subject due to nearly pathological tenacity (99th-plus percentile).

Spikes of Doom: Wheatley becomes quite fond of crushers with spikes on them later in the game, and eventually wants them to shoot fire. They also appear in the co-op mode.

Spiritual Successor: The student game TAG : The Power of Paint heavily inspired the Repulsion, Propulsion, and Conversion Gels. In fact, the entire dev team for that game was hired by Valve in order to use their tech.

Spoiler: Valve and Steam Forums took great measures to remove spoilers of Portal 2 when it got leaked, removing comments and persons. Shame said spoilers can't be untroped from this site...

Stealth Insult: GLaDOS drops these all the time while she tests you. The first time she does it, she refers to a bunch of garbage as being smelly and useless, and then clarifies that she was actually talking about you and she was afraid you didn't get it because you didn't say anything.

Later, when you fling yourself around a test chamber a few times:

GLaDOS:Look at you, soaring majestically through the air. Like an eagle. Piloting a blimp.

Valve said that the voice of Wheatley would be provided by, in their words, "Some guy from the office". Originally it really was: the placeholder voice was provided by Valve animator Richard Lord. Then they chose Stephen Merchant, most well known for his appearance on UK sitcoms The Office and Extras.

It gets better. What did Richard Lord say about his replacement? He was "over the Moon" with excitement. Guess where Wheatley winds up? (This may end up to be just a coincidence though, considering how much the story was progressed at that point.)

Hard Light Bridges are made of sunlight taken from the surface. In effect, whenever you use them, you're literally Walking on Sunshine.

When you reunite with PotatOS, she says, "You're good at murder. Could you murder this bird for me?" The bird appears to be a crow, and a group of crows is called a "murder".

When Cave Johnson makes his famous rant about how he's going to "make life take the lemons back", he mentions how he will get his engineers to invent an "Combustible Lemon" to burn down life's house down with. An exploding lemon could also be called a lemon grenade. In other words, Cave Johnson takes lemons and makes Lemon 'nades.

Fact Sphere: William Shakespeare did not exist. His plays were masterminded in 1589 by Francis Bacon, who used a Ouija board to enslave play-writing ghosts.

When Chell is beaten and thoroughly defeated, with her adversary holding all the cards, as it were, her only option is a very risky Desperation Attack: she literally shoots the Moon.

During the ending turret opera scene, a rather round turret leads the ensemble in soprano. Shortly after she's done, the game ends. So, in other words, it ain't over til' the fat turret sings.

All personality spheres are roughly the same size. In the end, the space sphere is orbiting Wheatley; therefore, Wheatley is incredibly "dense".

In the first Portal game, GLaDOS makes an attempt to kill you by throwing you into an incinerator. At the end of Portal 2, she instead lets you go free. However, the form she uses to relay her closing message is "FORM-29827281-12-2: Notice of Dismissal". That's right - according to GLaDOS, you're not just being freed; you're getting fired.

The Stinger: After the credits and the accompanying song, there is a scene of Wheatley floating in space, wishing in vain that he could apologize to Chell for his actions.

Stock Sound Effect: You know, it's a fact that people with a guilty conscience are more easily startled by sudden loud nois- *TRAIN HORN* I'm sorry, I don't know why that went off.

Another example being when Wheatley's figuring out how to open a door (which he doesn't notice is already open until you startle him). He accidentally causes an electrical discharge which uses the sound of the Tau Cannon firing.

GLaDOS gloats how she couldn't believe you opened a door that said "GLaDOS Emergency Shut Down and Cake Dispensary", and even says she had prepared better traps for you when you got past this one, but you were in a pit with only one possible exit.

Stylistic Suck: Wheatley's poorly designed test chambers are intentionally invoked Scrappy Levels used to portray Wheatley's poor intelligence, his naivety and how the Enrichment Centre has fallen into disarray under his control. The developer commentary states that they tried to make these chambers look as if they were created by first-time level designers, right to the corny idea of "signing the scenery with huge words."

If Chell doesn't open the door for Wheatley for a while, he'll eventually state that it isn't really important anyway, there aren't ten thousand other test subjects begging him to save them, and it's not like this place is about to explode any moment.

Then, barely a minute later, Wheatley requests this of Chell should his superiors come calling.

Wheatley: I mean, listen: we should get our stories straight, alright? If anyone asks — and no-one's going to ask, don't worry — but if anyone asks, tell them as far as you know, the last time you checked everyone looked pretty much alive.

Tactical Suicide Boss: Wheatley with his bombs. To his credit, he has bomb-proof shields ready since learning from the fight with GLaDOS, but there aren't enough to completely shield him and he didn't take Conversion Gel into account. Like GLaDOS, he also can't shut the bombs off.

People got very attached to the Companion Cube in the first game. In one of the early test chambers, GLaDOS decides to have fun by taking that fact into consideration. Multiple times.

The test chambers designed by Wheatley are pure Stylistic Suck - they all either consist of empty rooms with a single button that opens the exit straight away, have death traps that lack the "death" part (Wheatley even apologizes for not knowing how to fill the "deadly moat" with water, though if you didn't have long-fall boots, that easily-avoided fall would be at least crippling), have words crudely spelled out on the wall out of the level elements, or they're levels designed by GLaDOS crudely glued together with a few extra elements - sometimes just cosmetic - thrown in. Now look at any depository of player-made maps of any given videogame featuring user-created content. On a good day, only 75% will fit this mold.

Cut dialogue from the co-op mode has GLaDOS assign ATLAS and P-body to recover some human artifacts, including a Garfield-like comic strip called Dorfeldt. Her evaluation of its content is not kind.

GLaDOS:So. This cat loves lasagna so much that he eats all of the lasagna in his house. Oh, apparently it's not the cat's house, or his lasagna. Oh good! The man who owns the lasagna is furious! The end. The end?! That's not funny. Do either of you feel like laughing? All right, I'm pulling you out.

Technology Porn: Portal 2 might well be named "Technology Porn: The Game". The countless moving parts and panels when derelict test chambers pull themselves together in an intricate ballet are truly a sight to behold. It's especially noticeably during the beginning but continues to crop up later on as well. And then there's the turret assembly line with all the robotic armatures assembling turrets in lovingly rendered sequences. Really, the whole of Aperture probably counts, considering how complex and just plain ridiculously huge the place is. Oh, and let's not forget to mention GLaDOS' Activation Sequence after Wheatley accidently powers her up.

Tempting Fate: This happens a lot. For example, GLaDOS is sure she didn't prepare hundreds of tests in advance that Wheatley to steal and use. A minute later, it's revealed she kept hundreds of old tests.

Rick: I am a coiled spring right now. Tension and power. Just... I'm a muscle. Like a big arm muscle, punching through a brick wall, and it's hitting the wall so hard the arm is catching on fire. Oh yeah.

The End: Spoken, rather than shown as a title card. During The Stinger, Wheatley is in space, apologizes to the player, and finishes by saying, "The end." The way this is pulled off, it's a real Player Punch.

Announcer: All Military Androids have been taught to read and given a copy of the Three Laws of Robotics. To share.

Time Skip: between the very beginning of the game (at least 50 days since the first Portal) and the official opening to Chapter 1, an absurd amount of time passes. It's never revealed just how much time has passed, but apparently it was long enough for human civilization to collapse.

Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: In PeTI, an alternate universe Cave Johnson mentions there is no need to research methods to prevent a Godzilla attack on US soil, because no matter where in the world you hatch a nest full of Godzilla's, they always go straight for Tokyo.

Tomato in the Mirror: In Old Aperture, GLaDOS learns that Caroline, Cave Johnson's assistant, was uploaded into her. For all her antagonism towards humans, she is at least partially human herself.

Collectively, all of Aperture Science's personnel. Specifically, the ones who thought it would be a good idea to empower a potentially malevolent AI to release a deadly neurotoxin. Cave Johnson, the founder, gets his own version by testing the effects of human consumption of Conversion Gel on himself.

The Test Subjects that you are not a part of in the Perpetual Testing Initiative with Space!Cave, who regularly reminds them that they are in space, but they continue to go off and get themselves killed by trying to discover "the secret".

Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: By the end of the game, GLaDOS is so sick and tired of Chell repeatedly killing her and wrecking the Enrichment Center that she finally allows her to leave the complex.

Trailers Always Spoil: You knew GLaDOS was going to come back. It was inevitable. You also know that Wheatley isn't dead after you meet GLaDOS and that GLaDOS' defeat isn't the end of the game.

Trap Door: From floors that collapse due to structural decay to glass ceilings that shatter under your weight to actual trap doors and walls.

Tremor Trampoline: The "Please remain calm" animation playing around some elevators opens with a forest landscape rising up, which causes the figure on it to bounce up slightly when it comes to a stop.

Trust-Building Blunder: In the "Bot Trust" promotional video. Hey, the robots lasted six seconds longer than the human test subjects — go science! Earlier in the video, ATLAS directs a blindfolded P-Body to navigate around an Aerial Faith Plate, with predictable results.

Truth in Television: Moon dust is, indeed, "pure poison" (somewhat akin to asbestos dust), and will prove a challenge to overcome if we ever get around to attempting to colonize it.

Tsundere: GLaDOS finally lets you go, but only because it's the easiest way to never have to see your stupid fat face again and totally not because she likes you or anything, okay?

In the ending song "Want You Gone", she insists at length that she's happy and relieved to be rid of Chell, and mocks the idea that she might have considered Chell a friend...until near the end of the last verse, when there's a single line implying she misses Chell. This line appears as "[REDACTED]" in the lyrics displayed onscreen.

Twitchy Eye: After Wheatley is damaged in the first encounter with GLaDOS, he has a short circuit that causes him to spark and jerk randomly. Since he looks like a robot eyeball, the net effect is strongly evocative of a twitchy eye in a human, and serves the same purpose in terms of Foreshadowing.

Apparently, the Weighted Companion Cube from the first game was never properly incinerated, as it reappears without explanation (albeit a little charred) at the end. See Brick Joke.

Wheatley is crushed "dead" by GLaDOS when she wakes up. A few test chambers later he reappears more or less intact, save for a shorted circuit that sparks every now and then, with a Noodle IncidentHand Wave about a bird that the player only gets to hear part of. Said bird becomes a Running Gag as well as a Brick Joke.

Unnecessarily Large Interior: In the first game, you thought the Enrichment Center was quite big. In the second game... you find out that the Enrichment Center is big. Really big. And was built atop the old Enrichment Center, which is even bigger.

Unreliable Narrator: While GLaDOS certainly was one through the events of the first game, in the sequel it gets so crazy that it even goes so far as to extend to the operational history of Aperture itself — Aperture Science Innovators was running crazy superscience experiments, complete with some form of backpack-powered portal device, as early as the 1950s, when the "official" history says all they did was make shower curtains during this time and that the concept for the portal device didn't even come up until after Cave Johnson was "poisoned" in the 70s. Even the original given founding date is proven wrong, as signs in Shaft Nine proudly proclaim Aperture began science ventures in 1947, rather than 1953... the latter of which is the date when original portal testing began. Johnson's own recordings, naturally, also include pretty much his own take on everything.

Variable Mix: The music changes briefly when utilizing the various elements in each test chamber.

Vestigial Empire: While not an empire per se, the sealed-off test chambers (along with Cave Johnson's portraits) visualize both Aperture Science and their founder's deteriorating prestige and wealth over the years. In the fifties, they were testing astronauts, Olympian athletes and war heroes. By the seventies, they were paying homeless people and Johnson mentions he's gone bankrupt. By the time Johnson became deathly ill in the eighties, they were forcing employees to become test subjects.

Vetinari Job Security: GLaDOS is hardly the nicest individual ever... but Wheatley's attempt to run the facility is a disaster, and you end up putting Aperture back in her hands because she's the only one who can run it effectively; significant, even if you disapprove of the testing, since part of the facility is a nuclear reactor well on its way to detonating due to Wheatley's neglect.

Video Game Caring Potential: The game lets you rescue a moping, defective turret from the incinerator. It gives you a very honest "thank you" and an achievement titled "No hard feelings". In co-op, you can give hugs to your partner...

Video Game Cruelty Potential: ...but also refuse them. Part of the reason for using robots for co-op is so players wouldn't feel bad about killing each other in hilarious ways. And that defective turret above? Yeah, you can stick it into an Emancipation Grill immediately afterward, if you're feeling evil.

Villainous Breakdown: The entirety of Chapters 8 and 9 can be seen as an extended version of this, but the payoff occurs during the Final Boss battle. Best exemplified in the penultimate line below.

@@ You acknowledged that Microsoft Windows is not designed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility.

And of course the dialog to match:

Wheatley:You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!! Well, I'm still in control. And I have no idea how to fix this place! Oh, you had to play bloody cat and mouse, didn't you? While people were trying to work. Yes, well, now we're all going to pay the price, because we are all going to bloody die! Oh, brilliant, yeah. Take one more look at your precious human Moon. Because it cannot help you now!

Violation of Common Sense: Two specific achievements require you to take actions that will result in your immediate death. No, not your probable death. No, not your death only if you aren't quick enough on the portal triggers. To get those achievements, you must knowingly and willfully commit actions that will lead to your doom.

GLaDOS even comments on one of them. If you sit around long enough listening to Wheatley's attempts to coax you into jumping into a pit, she'll suggest that you really do have brain damage to actually be considering it.

Co-op has a variation on this: you have to knowingly and willingly commit an action which leads to your partner's death. More conventionally, finding the hidden Companion Cube is a one-way trip, but you don't know that going in.

And since the walls are comprised of smaller, independently moving panels, she even makes them creep forward in alternating progression as though they were large creatures crawling forward.

The Walls Have Eyes: The panels that make the walls of testing chambers have a glowing eye on the arms that hold/assemble them. It can get rather off-putting when the entire side of a room ratchets up and rows of teal pinpricks aim at you. It gets terrifying when the lightsturn red.

Walking Spoiler: It's kind of hard to say much about Wheatley without giving away the entire story.

"Aw. Just thinking back to the old days when we were friends. Good old friends. Not enemies. And I'd say something like 'come back', and you'd be like 'no problem!' And you'd come back. What happened to those days?"

There's Chapter Five, which includes the somewhat predictable but still-heavy wham of Wheatley losing it when plugged into the mainframe, and then things get really heavy in Chapter Six, wherein it's revealed that Aperture's superscience programs, including the portal device, are much older than everyone originally thought...

Also in easter egg form, we have the Borealis Dry Dock. Which hints that it may have been used for teleportation experiments.

Wham Line: "Actually... Why do we have to leave right now?" If the Evil Laugh preceeding it didn't do it, that line is what really clues you in to the fact that plugging Wheatley into GLaDOS's body was not the best idea.

Shortly afterward, we get this from GLaDOS after Wheatley puts her in a potato

GLaDOS: (to Wheatley) I know you. The engineers tried everything to make me behave...to slow me down. Once, they even attached an intelligence dampening sphere on me...it clung to my brain like a tumor, generating an endless stream of terrible ideas. ...It was YOUR voice.

In the second act, GLaDOS somehow knowing exactly what Caroline is about to say. This is also the first time the player will hear both voices in short order, and may realize that Ellen McClain is Talking to Herself.

Shortly therafter, GLaDOS tries to figure out what's going on. She has a realization of something she doesn't explain, then actually complements Chell before saying she needs to think about "something".

In the third act, *explosion* PART 5! BOOBY TRAP THE STALEMATE BUTTON!

What Happened to the Mouse?: Cores besides Wheatley in general. The cores that woke up at the end of Portal are never mentioned again (besides Wheatley), unless the bin of defective cores is meant to be the same thing. Wheatley mentions a manufacturing foreman (and at least one copy of him, so likely a core), but this is never touched upon. It also makes GLaDOS being "still alive" that much more confusing (her presumed backups being irrelevant), as it turns out she really was dead, more or less. The commentary indicates that there were originally going to be six distinct cores, but they were either cut or recycled as defective cores at the end of the game.

Even Wheatley seems amused when unpleasant things happen to turrets, despite mentioning in passing that they do feel pain. It's okay if it is "simulated" apparantly.

According to GLaDOS, even the Companion Cubes are sentient. Though given the relationship players form with the little things, there's a fairly high chance she's trolling.

What the Hell, Player?: Portal 2 contains a surprising amount of dialogue that you can't hear unless you do something that requires a conscious act of stupidity.

Dying in the HUB in co-op really confuses GLaDOS.

GLaDOS:I hope that was some kind of joke.GLaDOS:How can you fail this? It's not even a test!GLaDOS:I didn't think we'd have to keep track of the number of times you've died in the hub.

After escaping Wheatley's death trap at the start of Chapter 8, you're free to answer his pleads for you to turn around and come back. He's naturally surprised and asks you to please jump in that bottomless pit over there, following it up with a list of various incentives. If you stick around long enough to hear him out...

GLaDOS:You really do have brain damage, don't you?! I can't believe you came back.[player jumps into hole]Wheatley: Oh! Wow! Good! I did not think that was going to work. Achievement Unlocked

When Life Gives You Lemons...: Cave Johnson recites the classic "When life gives you lemons" line in a tired, almost defeated voice towards the end of the Old Aperture segments, only to subvert it in the next recording with a hilarious Rage Against the Heavens speech.

White and Grey Morality: Shows this by the end. GlaDOS undergoes some character development and not only lets Chell go but seems to appreciate her as a friend (though it's hard to tell), and Wheatley was always just an idiot who went drunk with power and in The Stinger expresses regret for everything he did. No one is really "evil" anymore.

William Telling: One trailer has Atlas attempting to shoot an apple off P-body's head... with a foot wide laser beam.

With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The chassis the GLaDOS is hooked up to, the one that grants full control over the facility, also has the side effect of driving any AI hooked up to it insane. The effect is almost immediate, as well.

World's Smallest Violin: GLaDOS does a variation in co-op. When you complete one of the early tests, she notes that no one was supposed to have completed it, and promises to build the world's smallest trophy for you.

GLaDOS:I know we're in a lot of trouble and probably about to die. But that was worth it.

Xanatos Gambit: Wheatley goes out of his way to anticipate every possible point of failure during the Final Boss fight. Being an idiot, he misses some key elements, but what elevates it to a Xanatos Gambit is that he is just smart enough to anticipate the possibility that Chell could win. The only things that stop him from being victorious are Chell's status as a Determinator and a Chekhov's Gun he could not possibly have known about.

In the old testing facility, you keep running into signs pointing to elevators that lead straight up to the surface. Every single one is either broken or inaccessible. Later, you do find an accessible shaft and ascend it, with a payoff at the end in the form of another of those giant doors. Opening it reveals a brilliant light... which is just a floodlight illuminating yet another elevator shaft.

Announcer: Corrupted core, are you ready to start the procedure? Wheatley: (sarcastically) What do you think? Announcer: Interpreting vague answer as "yes". Wheatley: No! No! Didn't pick up on my sarcasm!

You Are Fat: GLaDOS never actually calls Chell fat, but is very fond of implying it:

"Congratulations. Not on the test; most test subjects come out of hibernation terribly undernourished. I want to congratulate you on beating the odds and somehow managing to pack on a few pounds."

And again, when an Aerial Faith Plate malfunctions after Chell steps on it:

"Hmm. This Plate must not be calibrated to someone of your... generous... ness. I'll add a few zeros to the maximum weight." Cue a few beeps...followed by a few more...followed by another dozen or so.

GLaDOS:Core transfer? Oh, you are kidding me.Wheatley: What, are you still alive?! You are joking. You have got to be kidding me!

You Wake Up in a Room: This time, Chell wakes up in a "Relaxation Chamber". There are also two Callbacks to the Relaxation Vault from the first game; you jump down into the one from the first game when reentering the original test chambers, and GLaDOS later traps you in one just before you confront her.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle: This one seems to end a little too quickly: You install Wheatley as the new central core, deposing GLaDOS. Everything's sunshine and puppies, right? WRONG. Wheatley proceeds to go mad with power and GLaDOS's insults provoke him into a rage, causing him to dump you down into the very deepest, most forgotten levels of Aperture Science... where the game's biggest revelations yet await Chell and the player.

You know those signs that show what test you're on and how many there are at the beginning of the chambers? The player never gets to actually do all the tests in a set. Wheatley helps you skip a few of the first set (the original game tests), then breaks you out of GLaDOS's set early; once you get out of Old Aperture (which doesn't have the number signs) and get to Wheatley's part, he suddenly springs a trap on you before you've finished the set.

Your Size May Vary: The cover for the Original Sound Track depicts GLaDOS as being far larger than she actually is - the diameter of her eye is almost the size of a human.

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